Cracking Info Strategy

Institutions must first agree on their information strategy before embarking on sophisticated data warehousing or business intelligence (BI) projects, or even strategic operational applications like ERP or Banking.

So, the information strategy must be drawn in light of the business strategy reflecting the needs of all, not confining only to senior management or to the board.

Early concept of business intelligence advocated only the decision-makers on the recipient end; today's theory also empowers people involved in a company's front-line operations. This approach has led not only to identify 'decision makers' within the company, but also the 'power users' working in operations. The benefit vis-à-vis in this approach allows more timely and prompt action on problems identified from BI reports, compared to lost opportunities from the board pack, which usually are a few days old.

The thinking line should advocate smooth delivery of information to compliment quick decision-making. However most people tend to get bogged down with technology, tools and analytics. This should be avoided.

Care should be taken while developing strategies to consider not only technological needs, but also human needs. Keeping in mind corporate goals and objectives, the information strategy should identify and provide definitive guidelines as to what happens with redundant data, ownership of any piece of data, their origin and definition. Then there are security and update rules for business logic while transforming and the knowledge as to what data to be cleansed.

It then sets a baseline for decision-makers and power users, throughout the organization, for the validity and definition of metadata. For a company's working to implement BI or mission-critical ERP or Banking projects, this will enhance the acceptance of data.

Most institutions usually have multiple systems for multiple business units. The presence of legacy applications is also prominent. An information strategy will establish clear guidelines preventing data fragmentation and duplication. This aims to reduce the overall operational costs for development and support.

The information strategy should identify, after consulting with major users, the information requirements, delivery mechanisms, security and administration and technology platforms to ensure that the strategy is future-proof and robust.

One wonders, given the need to have information strategy beforehand, about the prudent role of strategic planning process for large corporations. One also feels dysfunctional and certainly amused by the technological hype and gimmick with which even non-technical decision makers have associated themselves like online-banking, anywhere-banking etc. The technology vendors surely will feel better about this savvy environment where there is less room for marketing product features!

Is this awareness based on clearly articulated objectives with specific business benefits listed and at least an approximate rate of return calculation? If the answer is yes then excellent news. Otherwise strategic planning process may find it difficult to obtain true benefit from technology.

So how do we do that? Well strategic planning is more of a process; some may use it as a management tool for performing a better job by ensuring that employees are focused to achieve common goals and objectives. It may help formulate corporate mission, vision, values, goals, objectives and roles & responsibilities for timely implementation.

For an institution wanting to draw up an ICT plan, the need for an on-going strategic planning process is enormous. Knowing that typically strategic planning is all about shaping the future with perceived and unknown circumstances, it is then imperative for strategic planners to think and draw up clear guidelines for effective utilization of tools and techniques. They typically do that by analyzing past experience and comparing that with present and future plans. This helps devise a few do's and don'ts to cope with future events.

Institutions wanting to embark on strategic ICT project should do their homework first before selecting hardware, software or communications needs. The overall needs should be based on corporate objectives supported by a clearly defined ICT policy that came out of strategic planning process.

For banking institutions an expensive software implemented without a business strategy for customer centric corporate culture complemented by a delivery focused value-based customer service mentality may not bring much value to its customers, internal or external.

Muhammad H Kafi is the Chief Technical Officer of Southtech Limited