Creating Winning Strategies for
Information Advantage
Top information technology innovators share secrets for driving
business transformation and gaining competitive advantage
through information.
Report and recommendations based on discussions with the
Council for Information Advantage
Dave Blue, Senior Manager, Enterprise Data Services,
The Boeing Company
Andrew Brown, Managing Director, Head of Strategy
Architecture and Optimization, Bank of America
Guy Chiarello, CIO, JPMorgan Chase
John Chickering, Vice President, Fidelity Investments
Paul Cushing, Senior Vice President, Technology and
Media Infrastructure, ESPN
Dimitris Mavroyiannis, Group Chief Information Officer,
Eurobank EFG Group
Sanjay Mirchandani, Senior Vice President and Chief
Information Officer, EMC Corporation
Joe Solimando, Senior Vice President, Global Operations
and Technology, CIO, Disney Consumer Products
Deirdre Woods, Associate Dean and CIO, The Wharton
School, University of Pennsylvania
An industry initiative sponsored by the Content Management
and Archiving Division of EMC
Introducing the Council for Information Advantage
The rapidly shifting dynamics of competition coupled with the unprecedented,
exponential proliferation of data have made it extraordinarily challenging for
business leaders to make informed decisions about how their companies can
best compete and grow. This lack of information insight is especially perilous
now, when volatile conditions leave little room for error. Change is essential as
the strategies set in motion today will determine which organizations lead their
markets tomorrow.
While most information technology leaders recognize the need to better
leverage information for business advantage, many still struggle to translate
this aspiration into concrete strategies and action plans. This is why EMC is
working with some of the top information technology leaders in the world to
identify winning strategies for information advantage: strategies for leveraging
information to compete more efficiently, increase customer loyalty, grow market
share, and identify new sources of business value.
EMC has convened the Council for Information Advantage, an advisory group
made up of global information leaders from “information-advantaged”
enterprises—organizations from a variety of industries that are successfully
using information to revolutionize how they compete and do business. We are
conducting in-depth interviews with the members of this Council and publishing
their ideas in a series of reports that provide candid lessons learned, proven
best practices, and expert guidance on how to transform information into
business value.
This report, which is the first to be published from the Council for Information
Advantage, provides top-level guidance on how organizations can begin enacting
the organizational, technological, and cultural changes needed to evolve into an
information-advantaged enterprise. Future reports will explore each of the critical
focus areas required for information advantage success in depth.
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EMC invites you to join this important
conversation. Please visit
www.councilforinformationadvantage.com
to download the reports and to
contribute ideas for future reports.
Contents
Introducing the Council for Information Advantage ............................................................................................................. 2
Information advantage defined ........................................................................................................................................... 4
Executive summary ............................................................................................................................................................. 4
Today’s climate: Too much data, not enough information .................................................................................................... 5
Strategies for transforming information assets into competitive gains ................................................................................. 6
Strategy #1: Transform information liabilities into business assets through information governance .......................... 8
Appoint a leadership team for information governance ......................................................................................... 9
Extend one set of information governance policies to cover the entire organization .............................................. 9
Make systems, not people, describe data ............................................................................................................. 9
Strategy #2: Elevate information architecture above technology architecture ............................................................. 10
Collapse information silos to unlock business value ........................................................................................... 10
Identify a test case to prove the concept ............................................................................................................. 11
Discourage new information silos ...................................................................................................................... 11
Strategy #3: Balance people and process over technology ......................................................................................... 12
Find executives to champion your cause ............................................................................................................. 12
Partner with business groups ............................................................................................................................. 12
Don’t wait until the end to engage the end user .................................................................................................. 13
Keep it simple for users ...................................................................................................................................... 14
Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................... 15
Appendix: Council for Information Advantage – Member Biographies ................................................................................ 16
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Information advantage defined
When an organization leverages information to
revolutionize how it competes and transform how it does
business, it has gained an information advantage.
Executive summary
The quantity of data is growing so fast and the variety of
information is becoming so overwhelming that the vast
majority of information today is shunted away, lost or
forgotten. This presents a significant business problem,
as enterprise data and content increasingly needs to
be tracked, retained and managed for compliance with
privacy regulations, e-discovery requirements and other
information policies.
Understandably, for many organizations, the new flood
of enterprise information could seem more like a liability
than an asset. A number of progressive organizations,
however, are leveraging information to change the
competitive landscape within their industries, forcing other
companies to step up their game and learn how to better
use information to compete. As more companies learn
to exploit information for competitive gain, the net result
won’t merely be more efficient and profitable industries:
there will be broader effects that range beyond the obvious
economic benefits. Healthcare providers will leverage
information to diagnose problems faster and earlier and
improve the quality of patient care. Telecommunications
firms will combine mobile phone subscribers’ GPS
coordinates with customer profile data to develop highly
customized promotional offers from nearby stores and
businesses. In short, as organizations learn how to better
use the information they have about the people they serve,
we, as a society, will experience profound changes in what
we expect and how we behave.
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Before these tectonic shifts can take place, however,
organizations first need to make better use of the
information they have. While opportunities for deriving an
information advantage abound, most organizations have
not yet been able to realize their information aspirations.
Quite simply, they are not exploiting their information
to become better informed about their current operating
climate or to inspire confidence in their future business
direction. Instead, they’re running head on into roadblocks
that are preventing them from achieving an informationdriven business advantage.
In this report, the Council for Information Advantage
outlines some practical strategies for clearing these
hurdles and leveraging information for business
advantage:
1.
2.
3.
Transform information liabilities into business
assets through information governance—Define
and institute an enterprise-wide information
governance policy to control how information is
kept, shared, and used.
Elevate information architecture above
technology architecture—Rather than fine-tune
data for specific applications or narrow business
processes, align data and technology solutions
to maximize the potential value of information
through access and reuse.
Balance people and process with technology—
Increase the time and resources devoted to
managing changes in how people work as a result
of new technology investments.
Today’s climate: Too much data, not enough
information
The difference between data and
information
Information today is growing at an exponential rate in quantity, variety,
and complexity. An IDC research study commissioned by EMC estimates the
amount of information in the digital universe is doubling every 18 months.
By 2011, the total amount of information created is forecasted to be 1.8
zetabytes, which, to provide some perspective, is roughly 129 million times
greater than the information contained in all the books catalogued in the
U.S. Library of Congress.
The words data and information are
often used interchangeably in casual
conversation. In some business
sectors, the two words have evolved
distinct meanings. Data means the
raw input used for analysis or for
other forms of processing intended to
derive meaning. Information is data
that has already been processed and
communicated to create meaning.
So, for instance, a retailer may view
its records of purchase transactions
as merely a set of data. If that retailer
sorts purchase transaction data by
customer, however, it can then derive
information about what a customer
buys and make some assumptions
about the business value of that
customer.
At the same time that the quantity of information is growing, the types of sources
generating it are also growing. Sensor technologies, for instance, are providing
a wealth of information on realtime conditions that organizations are using to
track inventory, streamline their supply chains, and create other efficiencies.
Enterprise 2.0 and mobile web applications are also generating vast amounts of
information, most of it “unstructured,” meaning it’s not stored in a format that
can be easily searched and used by an organization’s computers and databases.
Business interactions occurring through such applications are typically not
monitored or preserved, much less accessible or searchable. In fact, EMC
estimates that 85 percent of all unstructured information within organizations
goes unmanaged, meaning there aren’t formal policies for retaining, protecting,
or handling it. As a result, the vast majority of such information is simply
shunted away, lost, or forgotten. This presents a business problem, as corporate
information increasingly needs to be tracked, retained, and managed for
compliance with privacy regulations, eDiscovery requirements, and other
information policies.
Organizations today already carry a heavy burden for information management.
AMR Research estimates companies spent $32.1 billion on corporate
governance, risk management, and compliance activities in 2008. Over the past
two years, these costs have only risen, given the greater scrutiny of financial
reporting practices, the stricter regulatory climate, and the trend toward higher
corporate transparency and accountability.
Understandably, for many organizations, the new flood of enterprise information
could seem more like a liability than an asset. A number of progressive
organizations, however, are adopting strategies and tools to make their
information accessible, searchable, and actionable. These organizations
are using technology to connect people and processes, bridging software
applications, databases, and business units to create a centralized, unified view
of their customers and key business processes. To illustrate, within the financial
services sector, many large banks have developed the ability to cross-reference
information from customer credit card accounts with loan and mortgage
accounts to better analyze debt patterns and mitigate risks of default. And of
course Walmart was among the first companies to use realtime information
from millions of RFID sensors to track shipments and inventory. Leveraging this
The differences between data and
information can be blurry at times,
especially as one entity’s data can
be another entity’s information.
For instance, store addresses are
data to a retailer, but to a consumer
using the store location search
tool on the retailer’s website, the
addresses are information that can
be used to decide which store to visit.
Conversely, your home ZIP code may
be data to you, but when you enter it
into the store locator search tool on a
website, it becomes information that
a retailer can aggregate with other
customers’ ZIP codes to decide where
to open new stores.
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information enabled Walmart to streamline its supply
chain and further lower costs, causing a cascading effect
of efficiencies in not only the retail, transportation, and
logistics industries, but also in the business practices of
its tens of thousands of suppliers.
Information-advantaged companies are changing the
competitive landscape, forcing other companies to step up
their game and better leverage information to compete. As
a first step, organizations must begin making significantly
better use of the information they have. Today, most
organizations do a competent job of collecting, organizing,
and analyzing data, but they’re still struggling to transform
their data into useful information and actionable insight.
The need to make more productive use of corporate
information is particularly important now, as competition
has intensified from converging product categories and
globalizing markets. Last year, a survey of business
executives conducted by IBM’s Institute for Business Value
discovered that 8 out of 10 business leaders make major
decisions with missing or untrusted information. In many
cases, the information that’s needed probably resides
within the organization. It’s just not accessible at the right
time to make a tangible business impact.
With their companies facing extraordinary competitive
pressure and diminishing margins for error, leaders are
looking for new ways to inject predictability and fact-based
confidence into their decision making. They’re counting
on their information systems not only to manage data and
content for compliance, but also to derive insight for better
business outcomes.
Strategies for transforming information
assets into competitive gains
While organizations are recognizing the need for faster,
more informed decision-making, they’re also realizing just
how hard it can be to achieve a business advantage based
on information. Unfortunately, deriving an information
advantage is not a simple matter of applying softwaredriven pattern detection and analytics to data. It’s also
about providing the visualization and search capabilities
needed to make the information actionable to business
decision-makers. Perhaps most elusively, it’s about
adding human intelligence, interpretation, and context to
information in a cost-efficient and consistent manner.
From the outset, information-advantaged companies
understand that information needs to be managed
as a corporate asset, similar to the way organizations
strategically manage labor and capital. Only when
information is managed in this way can it have the chance
to evolve into the quality of business insight that results in
competitive gains.
“It’s a major advantage to have a culture that values
information, because it removes a lot of the barriers to
creating knowledge,” said Deirdre Woods, an associate
dean and the CIO for the Wharton School at the University
of Pennsylvania. “That’s one of the advantages universities
have. The sharing of information and knowledge is
inherently understood to be a good thing and a priority,
because it’s part of our core mission.”
Many members on the Council for Information Advantage
point to a strong customer orientation as a powerful
organizing principle for creating competitive gains, whether
those gains are based on information or other factors.
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Council member Guy Chiarello, CIO of JPMorgan Chase,
commented, “I think one of the characteristics that defines
the most advantaged companies is their prowess in
understanding the client. Regardless of how that happens
inside the organization, the most important thing is that
the company knows that its focus on the customer is equal
to if not more important than anything else that goes on,
up to and including revenue and net income. If there’s
a pure, clean, clear acknowledgment of that principle at
the top of the house, it starts this whole chain of activity,
where things begin to organize themselves inside the
company’s operations, inside the product divisions, inside
the technology, and inside the sales force. It touches every
interaction the company has. I think that’s what ultimately
makes the difference.”
Having a customer focus—or any central, organizing
principle that governs an entire business, whether it’s
operational efficiency, environmental stewardship or
something else—creates a cultural orientation and
predisposition for what types of information are valued and
how that information is organized and used. This, in turn,
makes it easier to find synergies and derive value from
information in support of the organization’s central mission
and business goals.
To illustrate, Eurobank EFG Group, a European financial
services organization with total assets of €84.3 billion,
has consistently organized its operations and services
around customers since its founding. Group CIO Dimitris
Mavroyiannis explained, “Our bank has a visionary set
of leaders who always saw the customer and not the
product. That was really embedded into the way we work
and in everything we do. In IT, this means everything is
engineered around the customer as a person—not around
the account, not around the loan. Our systems and data
repositories are all designed with the goal of providing a
unified view of the customer.”
“The hard reality is, companies have to work with what
they have,” said Sanjay Mirchandani, the CIO of EMC
Corporation, which works with a broad range of companies
to develop information strategies. “Every organization is
faced with practical constraints on their information, but
that doesn’t automatically translate into a competitive
disadvantage. The biggest disadvantage is when
companies look at the great results other companies have
achieved with their business information and believe they
can’t do something similar.”
Council members agree that there are a few fundamental
strategies all organizations can and should embrace
to derive greater business value from their corporate
information:
1.
2.
3.
Transform information liabilities into business
assets through information governance—Define
and institute an enterprise-wide information
governance policy to control how information is
kept, shared, and used.
Elevate information architecture above
technology architecture—Rather than finetune data for specific applications or narrow
business processes, align data and technology
solutions so as to maximize the potential value of
information through access and reuse.
Balance people and process with technology—
Increase the time and resources devoted to
managing changes in how people work as a result
of new technology investments.
In the following sections of this report, we will highlight
Council members’ specific guidance for implementing
each of the three recommendations above, drawing from
their professional experiences and lessons learned in
implementing information-advantaged business strategies.
Most organizations today, however, aren’t built around
singular organizing principles. Instead, the vast majority
of organizations have inherited an uneven legacy of mixed
corporate cultures and multiple strategic priorities, mostly
through decades of opportunistic growth and acquisitions.
As a result, they typically structure their information
assets around product lines or business groups, each with
different requirements and priorities—even different goals.
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Strategy #1: Transform information liabilities
into business assets through information
governance
The first step in deriving a competitive advantage from
information is to manage the information you have.
In the same way that organizations have well-defined
processes for managing finances, facilities, and people,
they need well-defined processes to manage their
corporate information. Some progressive organizations
have instituted an emerging management discipline
called information governance to control how information
is preserved, secured, accessed, and used across the
enterprise.
In a recent research study conducted by the Economist
Intelligence Unit, only 38 percent of the study’s
respondents said their companies had a formal
enterprise-wide information governance strategy in place.
Considering that 68 percent of respondents also expect
their information governance challenges to become more
complex over the next three years, there’s an urgent need
for more progress.
Information governance forms the policy foundations
needed to transform information from a business liability
into an asset. It helps organizations properly manage the
distribution of information, not just in conformance with
regulations and policies, but in ways that are productive
and beneficial to the enterprise. The process of defining
an enterprise-wide information governance strategy often
forces organizations to weigh, balance, and reconcile
competing interests: for instance, between information
security and accessibility, between customer privacy
and enhanced customer service, and, perhaps most
importantly, between different business groups with
competing information interests.
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“It’s natural for each business operation to want to
optimize technology, data, and information for its unique
needs,” said John Chickering, a vice president at Fidelity
Investments who has managed many multi-stakeholder
IT projects for content management. “The savvy CIO takes
each group’s business-centric viewpoint and weaves it into
a tapestry of all the information needs for the enterprise.
That’s where you get insight into how everything fits
into the whole.” Having that big-picture view helps the
organization make better judgments about where it will get
the best returns on its investment in technology, data, and
information.
In addition to balancing competing interests, the process
of defining information governance policies can reduce the
likelihood of future conflicts.
“If there’s a mandate that data has to be reusable, that
your priority is to get a single view of a customer or key
process to make more informed decisions, then every
time a new project comes up, you won’t have to have
the same discussions around architectural issues,”
said Andy Brown, who oversees information strategy,
architecture and optimization for Bank of America. “When
it comes to information governance, persistence pays, and
staying focused on the goal across other changes in the
organization and priorities is a requirement.”
But how can organizations start down the path of
information governance? Council members outlined some
key steps.
Appoint a leadership team for information
governance
Council members advise convening a cross-disciplinary
team, including some high-level executive sponsors, to
define an information governance strategy and set of
policies for the entire organization. Functional disciplines
represented on the team typically include legal, records
management, audit, finance, and key business units.
Although IT plays a key role in any information governance
committee or group, its most valuable function is perhaps
that of a facilitator, unifying and rationalizing the interests
of various groups to create a policy that works for the entire
organization.
“For an information-centric initiative to be effective, there
needs to be a high level of sponsorship and resource,”
said Dave Blue, a data management leader at Boeing.
“Executive sponsorship helps instill the functional
discipline necessary to decide and sustain a course
of action for managing information and to ensure that
everyone is aligned and operating to that direction.”
Also, some Council members recommend that
organizations consider appointing a Chief Information
Architect: someone who’s responsible for maximizing
the value and reusability of information by taking
an enterprise-wide, long-term view of technology
development. Ideally, this person would have the
responsibility and authority to drive communication,
collaboration, and conversion among the organization’s
various IT projects. Several of the companies represented
on the Council already have information architects playing
an active management role within their organizations.
Extend one set of information governance
policies to cover the entire organization
Many organizations already have policies covering subsets
of the information they generate. Policies governing
employee blogs, e-mail, and instant messaging are fairly
common, for example. An information governance policy,
however, should cover all the sensitive content handled
throughout the organization. The policy needs to be
comprehensive and specific enough to ensure consistent
compliance. At the same time, it needs to be practical and
easy to implement.
The Council suggests that an information governance
committee start with the basics—such as deciding what
constitutes a record and defining criteria for determining
which records or information assets to keep. “The mistake
some people make (in establishing an information
governance policy) is to try and jump to the end before
they even understand what the issues are,” said Mr.
Brown of Bank of America. “The first thing to do is to really
understand the objectives in detail, and I think a lot of
people assume they already do.”
Mr. Brown encourages organizations forming an
information governance policy to follow the three Cs:
communication, collaboration and convergence. “It starts
off with communication, making sure people are aware of
what other people are doing and where there is opportunity
for them to create efficiencies,” he said. “I prefer to start
intentionally but less formally by having discussion forums
where people talk about information architecture: what the
goals are for the program, what assets we already have that
we can reuse and how to minimize what we have to create
from scratch. You really have to address these fundamental
issues before you can have any productive discussion
around collaboration or convergence or blueprints and
roadmaps. The collaboration piece comes from making
sure that the opportunities you’ve identified are taken
advantage of. Then, the convergence piece can be a
blueprint—an end state for an information meta model
for some piece of your business, for example, or it could
just be that you’re going to use the same tools in how you
handle process automation and integration.”
Make systems, not people, describe data
Some Council members recommend that organizations
automate data classification and processing wherever
possible. A typical employee interacts with hundreds of
messages, documents, files, web pages, and database
records every day, accessing them through various
computers and mobile devices. It’s simply not realistic
to expect employees to properly file things in the right
folders, add the appropriate data tags, and remember what
information is regulated or needs to be preserved for legal
compliance.
“The more you ask users to tag information, the more likely
it is you’ll make your data problems significantly bigger,”
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said Mr. Chiarello of JPMorgan Chase. “The smartest way
to go about tagging information is to employ a really strong
metadata approach and then apply intelligent software to
figure out what the data is about, so that the user doesn’t
have to describe it.”
Instead of relying on manual input (and thus human
discipline and accuracy) to describe data, the Council
recommends that organizations evaluate the growing range
of software tools and services that are now available to
automate information classification. Various software tools
can handle everything from evaluating the content and
context of data to make workflow and policy decisions to
encrypting information at the point of capture.
Strategy #2: Elevate information architecture
above technology architecture
In most organizations today, information architecture
still takes a back seat to infrastructure architecture.
It’s a conventional mindset sustained by the simple
fact that most organizations have to support multiple,
incompatible information systems, applications, and
processes. When organizations devote their resources to
cultivating technology instead of information, the result is
often purpose-driven applications that segregate data in
proprietary formats that aren’t usable by other applications
or business processes. While such applications may be
effective in remedying a specific business problem, they’re
often short-sighted solutions that result in complexity
down the road when other valuable uses for the data arise.
“One of the interesting aspects and challenges of recording
and managing information is that we never anticipate
all the potential uses for it,” said John Chickering of
Fidelity. “The reason information exists in the first place
is to enable a business action that presumably results in
some business reward. Companies today are reasonably
effective at anticipating near-term uses for information, but
anticipating future uses for it—well, that’s very difficult.”
The Council believes the future-proofing of potentially
valuable information is one of the main reasons why
organizations should prioritize information architecture
over technology architecture. By valuing information above
infrastructure, the organization creates an operating
climate that says information should not be trapped inside
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the application that created it or mangled in conversions
from a proprietary data format. Instead, information should
be seamlessly available to all parts of the organization
that can leverage it. It should be integrated, accessible,
searchable, and actionable. By creating such seamless
information flows, organizations not only make it possible
to share information among software platforms and
business groups, they also should reap a higher return on
information assets and technology investments.
Collapse information silos to unlock
business value
Most companies today have a “silo problem.” They’re
simultaneously supporting multiple systems and networks,
each chartered and funded by a line of business or
division, each addressing a narrowly focused goal, and
each using different technologies and platforms. The
problem of siloed information can be further compounded
by mergers and acquisitions, because the silos of each
of the combining companies must be brought together,
creating “silos of silos.”
Guy Chiarello, the CIO of JPMorgan Chase, observed, “In
many cases, the siloing of the information is the biggest
problem that companies face in trying to create value from
information—hands down. Analytics can be done on any
piece of data that’s out there, but before you can unlock
the value of data, you first have to unlock data from the
application.”
Naturally, different applications and data repositories will
have varying data requirements. Nevertheless, Council
members say the variations should be federated under a
single enterprise-wide information framework to ensure the
information preserves its value and remains accessible to
and usable by other programs, processes, or systems. To
unlock existing data stores, organizations can reformat and
catalog information with metatags such as customer IDs,
product IDs, or trade IDs. This type of approach, while not
perfectly effective, does at least make the data available in
limited ways to other applications and processes.
Although the technology for eliminating information silos
is readily available, the consolidation process can be timeconsuming, resource-intensive, and hard to justify.
“There is no technological impediment to managing your
data better,” asserts Mr. Chiarello. “There are management
capabilities to reduce the cost of storage. There are a
range of different technologies that allow us to manage the
content better. There are a range of different technologies
to allow us to search and retrieve and ask questions of the
data better and better. So the real issue, from a business
point of view, is getting people within the product areas to
realize that there is tremendous value in doing that.”
Many Council members agree, observing the difficulty of
integrating information is often less a technical challenge
than an organizational one. It can be hard to muster the
support needed to green-light data consolidation projects.
Identify a test case to prove the concept
To justify the time, trouble, and expense of data
consolidation, the Council advises a pragmatic, projectbased approach to create unified views of information one
functional area or business process at a time, depending
on what’s most valuable to each enterprise.
Joe Solimando, the senior vice president of global
operations and technology and the CIO for Disney
Consumer Products, said, “One of the most important
things you can do is find the internal sponsor who will see
immediate value in this work. If you can prove the concept
with this sponsor, you can then enlarge the scope.”
In other words, IT leaders should identify the “low-hanging
fruit” that can serve as a test case—a business project that
can prove the benefits of information-advantaged practices
at an acceptable cost and with limited risk. Then, if the test
case is successful, it can be leveraged to push for broader
implementation within the organization.
“When you’ve got a hurdle in front of you in terms of an
initial IT investment, it helps to identify where IT interests
intersect with near-term business requirements,” said
Dave Blue of Boeing. “In other words, look for an urgent or
near-term need where you can work with the folks in the
business to advance capability in that area.”
Mr. Blue cited a Boeing information management initiative
to consolidate various data repositories into a data
warehouse for the company’s new fuel-efficient airplane,
the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. “We created a single way
for our suppliers, our customers, our engineers, and our
manufacturing floor to access the product data associated
with the 787,” said Mr. Blue. “Everyone comes in through
this common front-end, which accesses our consolidated
data warehouse. We then marry that up with product and
other reference data to present information back through
our business intelligence tool. Everyone has access to the
same set of data, and the information is made available to
a much broader user base, much more rapidly than they
could have gotten it before.”
In addition to facilitating information-sharing and
collaboration among the thousands of people involved in
designing and producing the Boeing 787, the program’s
centralized data warehouse has also resulted in cost
savings and management and maintenance efficiencies.
“Engineers are very good at managing the information
that they need, and the way their content is organized
makes perfect sense to them. But being able to understand
the longer-term impact or the potential reuse benefit of
that information across the organization is something
they don’t necessarily deal with,” said Mr. Blue. “One
of the challenges to creating an information advantage
is overcoming this tendency to deal with the here-andnow and the ‘it works for me’ mindset. It’s about looking
beyond the single application or function and looking
instead at optimizing information throughout its lifecycle.”
To date, Boeing has received 851 orders valued at
$148 billion for its 787 airplanes, making this the most
successful launch of a new commercial airplane in Boeing’s
history.
Discourage new information silos
Council members were practically unanimous in their
view that the best way to phase out information silos is
to simply prevent new ones from forming. To do this, new
IT projects should be required to conform to information
governance policies that prioritize information services
and reuse over the one-off needs of each application,
information source, or business unit. Adhering to such
policies will require IT leaders to evaluate new technology
implementations through the lens of information
architecture or business process requirements, further
reducing the likelihood that application-specific
information stores will emerge.
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Strategy #3: Balance people and process over
technology
Council members frequently emphasized that creating
an information advantage is not simply an IT function
involving technology infrastructure; it’s a business shift
affecting the entire enterprise. This shift often requires
changes in company processes, individual work habits,
and even organizational culture. In other words, creating
an information advantage for the enterprise is not simply
a matter of changing technology or processes; it’s about
changing what people do and how they do it.
John Chickering of Fidelity believes people and culture
are perhaps the most important factors in deriving an
information advantage. “New tools and methodologies
are helpful for setting up a context for change, but unless
you have the right disposition and cultural strategy in
which all the people in the business are working toward
the new direction, the changes you want won’t take hold.
Everything will be abandoned as soon as the consultants
leave the building.”
Council members agreed that people are often “the X
factor” in any information strategy. Council members
offered a few people strategies for increasing the likelihood
that new programs for deriving information-based
advantages will take hold.
Find executives to champion your cause
Council members observed that information-advantaged
organizations usually enjoy high-level executive support
for strategic information initiatives. Executive advocacy is
useful in securing the cooperation of various functional
departments or regional divisions, who may view the
discontinuities inherent in the technology transition to an
information-centric architecture as an inconvenience.
12
“There needs to be a pure, clean, clear acknowledgement
from the top of the house that [securing an information
advantage] is critical,” says JPMorgan Chase’s Guy
Chiarello. “If it’s not coming from the top down, there has
to be a business driver for implementing the program—
either a revenue opportunity or cost reduction or customer
satisfaction difference. If you don’t have that business
driver, then it won’t get resolved.”
Providing a compelling business case for implementing
an information-centric program can help sway executives
to advocate for change. Council member Andy Brown
from Bank of America suggested one possible tactic.
“Sometimes it can help to put a set of statistics the CEO
or the board has never seen before around their own
environment,” he said. “And then actually explain why
things are the way they are. What processes, human
behaviors, organizational structures and so on have
created the dissonance that exists. And then explain what
you would need to do or what things you could start to
do that would enable people in the firm who are working
on like problems with like information requirements to
speed progress and create efficiencies by actually working
together.”
Partner with business groups
To make the business shift necessary for an organization
to transform information into a source of competitive
leverage, Council members say it’s essential for business
groups—the users of technology solutions—to work in
close collaboration with IT to define requirements and to
jointly develop the solution.
“The users within the business really have to be engaged
in strategizing about the information they want and how
to present it,” said Paul Cushing, the senior vice president
for technology and media infrastructure at ESPN. “After all,
they’re the experts in their particular parts of the business.
Our role in IT is to ensure we’re bringing a proper process to
gathering requirements and an organizational maturity to
our guidance. That means we’re asking thorough questions
and they’re thinking outside the box and challenging us.
So, when we do go off and build or bring an application or
solution to the table, it’s one that’s effective and exactly
what was needed.”
Organizations or groups considering technology-aided
solutions to business problems should involve IT in
defining needs and requirements, not simply involve them
when it’s time to specify the software or systems. Similarly,
IT should engage the business units that will be using
the solution in technology evaluations and selection. By
establishing an early rapport and collaborating throughout
the process, organizations are more likely to achieve the
results they want and expect.
Council member Deirdre Woods from The Wharton
School at the University of Pennsylvania, related a recent
experience that illustrates the benefits of involving end
users in technology planning and selection. When The
Wharton School upgraded its classroom technologies
this past summer, the IT department invited faculty to
participate in developing requirements. The IT team
provided demonstrations of new solutions they wanted to
introduce, such as an instructor’s podium outfitted with
video annotation and conferencing capabilities. The faculty
expressed interest in these new capabilities but pointed
out that where they really needed help was in enhancing
audio in the rooms so they could better hear their
students. They also wanted help identifying students and
pronouncing their names, especially since The Wharton
School has a high percentage of international students.
In the end, the IT team focused their efforts on wiring
students’ seating areas for audio and providing instructors
with a recording of students’ names along with enhanced
seating charts.
“We did some of the cool, new stuff, such as providing
faster video uploading and annotation capabilities,” said
Ms. Woods. “But had we not invited our faculty to talk to
us about their experience in the classrooms, we would
have totally missed some of the seemingly more mundane
needs that were far more important to them.” The Wharton
IT team’s strong end-user focus has helped it earn high
satisfaction ratings from students and faculty in various
evaluations of technology programs.
Don’t wait until the end to engage the end user
“To make changes stick, you have to spend at least as
much time on the people side of the equation as you
do the technology side,” said Joe Solimando of Disney
Consumer Products. “No matter how great the technology
is, you still have to persuade people to use it. It’s not
enough to conduct some [employee] training when the
project is done. You have to make them feel invested in the
project in the first place.”
An organization’s chance of success in introducing
any major change in technology or process improves
dramatically if the organization doesn’t wait until the end
to involve its end users. A good example of this came
from Council member Eurobank EFG Group, an innovative
international bank with more than 1,600 service points in
10 countries. In 2005, Eurobank EFG Group launched new
workflows, methodologies, and systems for originating
and managing loans. Understanding the changes might be
disruptive to its customers, employees, and operations,
the bank’s change management team went to great
lengths to ensure a smooth transition to the new lending
processes.
“We wanted people to not think of the changes as a
technology project or a new requirement, but as something
that was friendly, something that was going to help them in
their everyday work,” said Group CIO Dimitris Mavroyiannis
in explaining his people-oriented approach for designing
and launching the new loan origination system. “If we
had said this is a service-oriented architecture project
with business rules and business process management,
it wouldn’t have sounded like something that people can
relate to. So we gave the project a name: ‘EDDIE.’”
EDDIE originally stemmed from an acronym for Eurobank
EFG Group Document & Data Interactive Engine, but it was
always just called “EDDIE.” EDDIE was given a face—a
smiley blob—that was used to personify the program for
the bank’s employees. This was all done well before the
roll-out of the new systems—even before the IT team had
finished designing the system itself.
“Business process management is about changing
the culture of the business in terms of how people
will approach and deconstruct a problem,” said Mr.
Mavroyiannis. “It is very difficult to do. Talking to
employees about the benefits—that the new way is far
13
more consistent and structured and automated and
reduces the bank’s risks while creating the same value—
won’t inspire change, because people are familiar and
comfortable with how they’re operating. It’s easy now
for us to say we had to communicate the changes that
made our people understand the value in a way they
could personally relate to while still giving them a comfort
zone—showing them the future and opening the realm of
possibility for them and so on. This is what we had to do,
and we actually did it. In hindsight, it’s easy to summarize,
but at the time, when we were actually going through it, it
was not so easy.”
Eurobank EFG Group’s IT teams completed implementation
of the EDDIE loan origination system branch by branch.
“People factors” were carefully factored into each and
every step of the roll-out. Branch employees were trained
in how to use the new systems and processes and well
supported in transitioning to EDDIE. They quickly accepted
EDDIE as a new, improved way of doing what they’d done
before, and EDDIE became a ubiquitous feature within
Eurobank EFG Group.
As a result, the bank gained business agility, leveraging
EDDIE’s capabilities to rapidly update lending rules and
processes in response to constantly changing business
conditions. Eurobank EFG Group’s customers have seen
improved response times and faster processing for
mortgage applications. In fact, time to disbursement
was shortened by up to 30 percent immediately after the
rollout.
“EDDIE created a foundation for continuous operational
improvement in Eurobank EFG Group,” said Mr.
Mavroyiannis. “The technologies around EDDIE are
now becoming so tightly integrated with our enterprise
architecture that soon we will not be able to identify what
part is EDDIE and what part is legacy. We consider the
program a great success.”
Keep it simple for users
From their experiences in rolling out dozens of major
programs, Council members believe the best rule of thumb
is to keep solutions as simple as possible, erring on the
side of “digestible” solutions that are perhaps less featurerich but easy to use.
14
“My philosophy is, I’d rather provide a simple tool that
helps people do their work than introduce five new
solutions that wind up hindering people in their work.”
said The Wharton School’s Deirdre Woods. “It’s easy to get
swept away by interesting, new technology, which is why
it’s really, really important to focus on the people who are
actually going to be using and adapting the technology,”
In deploying a new CRM suite for EMC, Sanjay Mirchandani
resisted the temptation to introduce a lot of technical
features in the initial roll-out. “Our philosophy was to go
‘thin and wide’ with the deployment—get a core set of
benefits into the hands of users as fast as possible and
then go deeper with the capabilities through an iterative
process,” said Mr. Mirchandani.
EMC’s deployment initially targeted 6,000 users globally
over the span of 5 releases within a 12 month period.
Such a complex, large-scale deployment could have taken
years to implement in its entirety, but EMC opted to roll
out a streamlined version of its CRM suite within months.
The rationale was that users probably wouldn’t be able
to absorb the features of a full-blown CRM system right
away, anyway. By introducing a core subset of features,
many EMC sales representatives and managers were able
to discover the system’s immediate, incremental benefits
in their daily jobs and become familiar enough with the
basics to take advantage of the more advanced features
when EMC rolled them out in subsequent phases.
EMC’s “thin and wide” deployment strategy for its CRM
system has resulted in a widely used application that has
extended EMC’s infrastructure for sales and marketing
information management. Through the deployment of
CRM, the sales force now has one place to go for account
and contact information. The tool also has a mechanism to
capture account intelligence in the field to incorporate into
the company-wide master information framework.
Conclusion
As more and more organizations learn to leverage information to compete more
efficiently, increase customer loyalty, grow market share, and identify new
vectors for business growth, creating an information advantage will not just be
a matter of gaining a competitive edge, it will evolve into a condition of survival.
The faster organizations learn to manage their information and master the
science and art of putting information to work, the better off they’ll be.
The members of the Council for Information Advantage contend that creating
a business advantage from information doesn’t solely require changes in
technology. Of equal or perhaps greater importance is a change in mindset. For
most organizations, the challenge resides in compelling leaders to realize that
information holds value and, if managed as a strategic asset, can be a source
of enduring competitive advantage. It can be hard to justify investing attention
and resources to assets in which the value can be hard to quantify—like,
perhaps, the value of information—but Council members advise identifying a
business area where organizations can test the concept and prove the value of
information-advantaged practices. Then, leaders can leverage success in the test
case to deploy information-advantaged practices more broadly in other parts of
their organizations.
Council members are mindful of the practical realities and challenges facing
the vast majority of organizations: most of us don’t have the luxury of starting
off with clean slates, but must manage decades of investments in information
technology. Council members know that, for most of us, transformations
don’t happen overnight, but over months and sometimes years. Given these
realities, they recommend a pragmatic, disciplined approach to creating the core
conditions needed for the emergence of an information-advantaged enterprise:
•
•
•
Looking ahead
In future papers, the Council for
Information Advantage will dive
into greater detail about some of
the topics touched on in this initial
report. Subsequent reports may
feature these topics:
• Technology Engines for
Information Advantage: How
Cloud Computing, Automation
and Other Solutions Change
the Game
• The Human Discovery Factor:
What We Can Learn from
the Behavioral and Cultural
Hallmarks of InformationAdvantaged Companies
• Information Strategies for
Competitive Gain: Innovative
Business Practices for
Information Advantage
Collaborate with leaders to create an information governance strategy
to govern everyone everywhere within the organization.
Invest only in those processes, tools, and systems that fit into an
integrated, unified information architecture, not in point solutions that
do one thing well but hold captive the information they generate.
Be mindful of the human factor when introducing new technologies
and processes. It’s ultimately people who make or break most change
initiatives, so winning the advocacy of those who will use the new
process or system is paramount for success.
These three “starting point” strategies will manifest differently for each
organization, but they all reflect the fundamental belief that information is
valuable and that managing it is just as important and specialized a discipline
as managing an organization’s finances, capital equipment, or people. Our
Council members have all deployed these starting point strategies for creating
an information advantage, and they hope in subsequent Council reports
to help other organizations blaze their own trails toward an informationadvantaged future.
15
Appendix: Council for Information Advantage – Member Biographies
Dave Blue
Senior Manager, Enterprise Data Services
The Boeing Company
Dave Blue leads the delivery of enterprise data services within Boeing Information Technology. He previously led
Boeing Information Architecture, where he was responsible for developing and communicating the vision, strategy,
and architecture supporting information management disciplines and for applying this architecture to projects. As a
member of the Chief Architects Council (CAC), he helped ensure that information architecture was integrated within
the overall enterprise architecture. Mr. Blue’s Boeing career has been in information technology, with progressively
broader responsibilities in application development and maintenance, information management, and architecture
disciplines.
Andrew Brown
Managing Director, Head of Strategy Architecture and Optimization
Bank of America
Andy Brown leads enterprise technology and delivery strategy, architecture, and optimization for Bank of America.
In this role, he is responsible for driving technology strategy, architecture, and convergence, as well as introducing
technology innovation into the company. Mr. Brown was managing director and CTO for Infrastructure at Credit Suisse
from 2006 to 2008, where he oversaw a global virtualization initiative as a major tenet in reducing power, servers,
storage, and data centers. Prior to that, he was managing director and chief technology architect at Merrill Lynch, where
he spearheaded strategic plans, guidelines, technology governance processes, and technology portfolio management.
Previously, Mr. Brown led technology architecture for Banque Paribas Capital Markets, based in London and Paris. His
major achievement was the rollout of Microsoft® Windows® NT desktop across the PCM businesses, enabling a new
generation of desktop financial instrument development and associated revenue streams. Prior to that, Brown worked
for British Telecom, Royal Dutch Shell, and Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI). He holds a BSc in Chemical Physics from
University College London.
Guy Chiarello
CIO
JPMorgan Chase
Guy Chiarello has worldwide responsibility at JPMorgan Chase for information technology functions. Mr. Chiarello joined
the firm in November 2007 and is a member of its executive committee. Before joining JPMorgan Chase, Mr. Chiarello
was chief technology officer and chief information officer for Morgan Stanley for seven years, responsible for the global
strategy and execution of information technology for both its securities businesses and corporate functions. He joined
Morgan Stanley in 1984 and served in a number of information technology roles over the majority of 23 years. Mr.
Chiarello began his career in information technology in 1981 with the Treasury Department for the State of New Jersey.
Over the past 10 years, he has been an executive advisor for leading public and private technology companies on
business strategy and technology innovation. He has garnered industry and private sector recognition through various
awards including Top Financial IT Executive by CIO Forum, Computer World Premier 100 Leaders, 2008 CIO of the Year by
NASSCOM, and a special Alumni Citation Award from the College of New Jersey. Mr. Chiarello has a BS in business from
the College of New Jersey.
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John Chickering
Vice President
Fidelity Investments
John Chickering’s experience as a consultant, software vendor, end user, and lecturer gives him a unique perspective on
applying technology to manage information. He is a Vice President at Fidelity Investments, where he is currently working
with document management, archive, and records management solutions. Mr. Chickering has delivered solutions in the
public sector and financial services industries and has served as CIO at two human resource services companies. A former
licensed merchant marine engineering officer, he began his IT career at American Management Systems, where he was
a founding member of the firm’s imaging practice. After nearly ten years, he moved on to spend two years at a workflow
software vendor before joining Fidelity. Mr. Chickering has authored several articles and has spoken at both industry
conferences and continuing education seminars hosted in academia. He is a member of AIIM’s Board of Directors and its
Emerging Technology Advisory Group. He is also an active volunteer with several community service organizations. Mr.
Chickering holds an MBA (Operations Research) from the University of Maryland and a BS (Marine Engineering) from the
United States Merchant Marine Academy.
Paul Cushing
Senior Vice President, Technology and Media Infrastructure
ESPN
Since 2007, Paul Cushing has overseen IT and all corporate systems infrastructure, telecommunications and broadcast
transmission and encryption for ESPN. He previously was ESPN’s senior vice president for information technology and
application management. Paul served 22 years in the U.S. Navy, enlisting directly out of high school in Omaha, Nebraska,
in 1969. He served a tour in Vietnam and spent 11 years on fast attack submarines as a data systems computer specialist.
In 1981, he received his commission to ensign in the United States Navy and was subsequently assigned as the Systems
Management Division Officer at the Fleet Combat Warfare Center in Virginia Beach. In 1984, he was transferred to the
aircraft carrier U.S.S. John F. Kennedy as the Computer Systems Division Officer. In 1987, he assumed duties as the Chief
of the Systems Management Division at the Joint Electronic Warfare Center in San Antonio, Texas, supporting the Joint
Chiefs of Staff. He retired from the Navy in 1991 after serving in the Gulf War in Saudi Arabia, supporting General Norman
Schwarzkopf’s staff in a highly technical role. Paul was awarded the Joint Service Commendation Medal by the Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs, General Colin Powell, for his exceptional service during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.
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Dimitris Mavroyiannis
Group Chief Information Officer
Eurobank EFG Group
Dimitris Mavroyiannis oversees all of Eurobank EFG Group’s IT units, ensuring the various units are working as a whole
to help achieve the bank’s overall business objectives, as well as maximize the value of IT investments, optimize the
utilization of IT resources, and assure information systems and the technological infrastructure are able to support the
company’s innovative business initiatives. Mr. Mavroyiannis joined the bank in 1999 to develop its Internet strategy and
banking channel, a role that evolved into his leading a subsidiary specializing in e-business and e-commerce consulting
and implementation services for the Greek market. Mr. Mavroyiannis was the CEO of this services group until 2004. He
then served in various leadership roles for Eurobank EFG Group, including CIO of the bank’s operations in Greece. Prior to
Eurobank EFG Group, Mr. Mavroyiannis worked for IBM Consulting Group in Europe, as well as for smaller companies in
Greece and abroad. He has an MBA from Imperial College London, an MSc from University College London, and a BEng from
the University of Sussex.
Sanjay Mirchandani
Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer
EMC Corporation
Sanjay Mirchandani is responsible for extending EMC’s operational excellence and for driving technological innovations
to meet the current and future needs of EMC’s business. He also leads EMC’s network of global delivery centers in India,
China, Russia, and Israel. These centers support EMC’s worldwide research and development efforts and provide customer
support and shared services. Mr. Mirchandani most recently served as the senior vice president leading the EMC Office
of Globalization. In this role, he identified global growth opportunities and built the EMC processes and infrastructure
required for global expansion. He was also responsible for bringing in new strategic international partners into EMC’s
Global Alliances program. Prior to joining EMC, Mr. Mirchandani was Microsoft’s Regional Vice President, Enterprise
Services, Asia, where he worked with the region’s largest customers and partners. He also held multiple management
positions during his tenure with Microsoft, including President, Asia Pacific Region; President, South Asia; and Managing
Director, India. Mirchandani earned an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh and a BA from Drew University.
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Joe Solimando
Senior Vice President, Global Operations and Technology, CIO
Disney Consumer Products
Joe Solimando defines the strategic direction for information technology across all of Disney Consumer Products’ (DCP)
lines of business, which include licensing for toys, apparel, and hardlines products; retail stores; worldwide publishing;
and e-commerce. He also serves as DCP’s segment representative on The Walt Disney Company IT Leadership Board, which
oversees The Walt Disney Company’s information technology direction, standards, and company-wide IT initiatives. Mr.
Solimando joined Disney in 1998 as vice president, operations & technology of Disney Consumer Products. In this role, he
managed DCP’s Shared Applications Services group responsible for the implementation and support of shared financial
and HR business applications. He also led the planning, development, and implementation of operations and technology
systems for several business units as the IT business partner for vertical businesses, including Walt Disney Art Classics,
Disney Direct Marketing, Walt Disney Records, and Disney Worldwide Publishing. Prior to joining Disney, Mr. Solimando
held the position of senior manager of information technology in the management consulting practice at Ernst & Young. In
his 10 years with this firm, he worked on IT strategic planning, system evaluation, selection and implementation projects
for many top consumer products, retail, entertainment and manufacturing companies. Mr. Solimando has also held
information technology and project management positions at Wicke’s Companies and Fluor Engineers. He holds both an
MBA and a BS in Civil Engineering degree from The Pennsylvania State University.
Deirdre Woods
Associate Dean and CIO
The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Deirdre Woods leads a 120-person organization at Wharton Computing in developing and maintaining technologies that
further The Wharton School’s leadership in research, knowledge creation, and teaching. In her years at Wharton, Woods
has been instrumental in bringing student and faculty satisfaction with IT services to the highest level and has served as a
strategic driver for some of Wharton Computing’s most innovative technologies. As Associate Dean and Chief Information
Officer, Woods ensures that all of the school’s various technology initiatives and programs are effectively implemented.
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