Why organization need an Information Strategy Plan?

The way of you deal with your information will determine whether you win of loose! It is simple and it is true. Information is one of the most valuable assets in today’s dynamic business environment. In order to deal with these changes organizations must leverage their business objectives recognition, definition and achievement on information assets. Consequently, the business intelligence strategy in the organization becomes more significant.

There are two approaches of driving business intelligence in the organization:

• TACTICAL– driving solutions as problem appears
  • Advantages: solving current  problems, less expensive for particular problem, quick implementation
  • Disadvantages: no leveraging opportunities, highly  integration costs, inadequacy of information caused by integration problems
• STRATEGICALLY – leveraging business intelligence on technical and organizational foundation
  • Advantages: “single truth for all”, lower TCO, increased ROI, easy response to changes leveraging on existing infrastructure
  • Disadvantages: initially more expensive then tactical solutions, requires more discipline and formal approach in the  implementation (strategically driven) 

Therefore, the only efficient and effective approach to respond to the dynamic business requirement is to drive business intelligence strategically. Strategic driven business intelligence approach has following benefits to the organization:

• Establishment of information foundation which would integrate all organization’s  informational potential from various sources (internal or external)
• Efficient and effective way for respond to the changes (regulatory changes, mergers, acquisitions, new business requirements)
• Data Quality improvement – avoid data inadequacy caused by integration problems
• Faster user adoption of a new software solutions
• Easy alignment  with business objectives
• Lower TCO (avoid integration expenses, reduce risk for projects failure)
• Increased ROI (efficient usage of IT technologies, Business decisions are  based on full information potential

 How Information Strategy Master Plan could help?

Information Strategy Master Plan is intended to align business objectives with current state and IT trends and defines clear path for improvements and future deployments of particular solutions according to defined business intelligence architecture. 

Information Strategy Master plan continuum

After Information Strategy Master Plan is initially established, it would become REFERENCE for future solution implementation/deployment initiatives responding to business requirements. Over the time, Information Strategy Master Plan should be periodically align with changes in business objectives in order to stay as “STRATEGIC” and “REFERENCE”. 

Information Strategy Master Plan Development – Project Outline

Information Strategy Master Plan Development process consist of following phases:

• Analysis Phase
  • Business Environment Analysis
  • Technical Environment Analysis
  • Business Objectives Analysis
  • Information Technology Trends
• Development Phase
  • Vision And Objectives
  • Mapping Business Objectives To Environment
  • Data Model
  • Architectural Principles
  • Platform And Tools
  • Business Intelligence Competence Center
  • Business Intelligence Data Governance Model
• Deployment phase
• Operational work

Analysis Phase Considerations

The phase requires involvement of business and IT professionals in the organization. Business professionals should be interviewed in order to get comprehensive information about current business environment and business objectives in the further period.  IT People should be interviewed in order to get comprehensive information about current technical environment and further plans. The both, business and IT professionals should be interviewed about their mutual relationships and efficiency and effectives of their cooperation.

Beside interviews during analysis phase, regular and ad hoc meetings and workshops should be scheduled.

This phase will result with formal scope of the project – Information Strategy Master Plan components specification.

Development Phase Considerations

Deployment phase includes formal design of strategy elements such as: business objectives, mappings, technical architecture, architectural principles and so on. Especially important elements of the strategy are establishment of Business Intelligence Competence Center (mix of Business and IT professionals that drives BI initiatives according to business objectives) and Data Governance Model (policies and procedures that establish environment for appliance of Information Strategy Master Plan). Information Strategy plan have to be a formally specified (in projects I working for I am using Sparx Enterprise Architect as a tool).

Deployment Phase Considerations

Deployment phase includes organization commitment to make this plan happen. That includes production roll up of Data Governance model and Business Intelligence Competence Center.

Operation work Considerations

Information Strategy Master Plan must have formal specification. Changes in the environment, during the time, sometimes consequences with changes in business objectives – and that must be propagated on the Master Plan as well. For that reason is very important to choose a right tool, flexible enough to provide master plan alignment with business objectives up to date.