Collaborate to maximize business value from strategic information

Information challenges facing IT and business executives

In a Gartner research note published earlier this year, "Prepare to Be an Information Leader", Gartner points out three information management challenges that IT and business executives face:

• 1. CEOs know that better information can provide competitive advantage, but the majority are unable to articulate what they
  need and why.
• 2. CIOs are not well-positioned to meet the CEO's information needs, and they have trouble asking the right questions to determine what those needs are.
• 3. Organizations need new methods of valuing information and its contribution to business success.

The world of information is changing fast, and these comments suggest that it's time to do things differently.

Optimize information for business value

The information landscape is shifting like quicksand beneath our feet. New sources and types of data threaten to overburden current IT environments. At the same time, they provide new opportunities to get deeper insight about customers, risk, business operations, supply chain, and product development. New advancements in technology allow IT to give the business more of the information it needs to drive business value. In short, information is becoming the new currency of business.

But if business and IT aren't speaking the same language or even asking themselves and each other the right questions, they will be hard pressed to survive, much less lead, in an information-driven world. HP is helping clients bridge these gaps with our Information Optimization Transformation Experience Workshop. We are helping them by empowering senior business and IT leaders with an understanding of information and perspective not only on how to use it to improve their businesses, but how to maximize the value that may be obtained. Indeed, that is the HP message behind Information Optimization: pursuing an IM transformation journey that maximizes the Return on Information (ROI). At HP, we define ROI as: ROI (Return on Information) = Data Value / Total Cost where the value of data is determined by the realized value the data brings to the business.

Plan your transformation journey

When it comes to information management, every organization is going through a transformation journey, whether they realize it or not. It might be a reactive journey, responding to internal or external pressures and changes around them. Or it could be a purposeful, proactive journey to put information at the center of business processes, decisions, and actions to create better business outcomes. Better yet, it is not just a journey, but more like a race; planned out and optimized for maximizing business value and realizing competitive advantage before anyone else.

HP's one-day Information Optimization workshop does exactly what Gartner's paper suggests; it provides a specific methodology that helps clients intentionally map out their transformation journey to get the greatest possible Return on Information from their limited IT investments. It guides them through a strategic discussion and high-level planning for the next three to five years. Intended for senior business and IT leaders, it's a highly collaborative, slide-free, "role-up-your-sleeves" type of workshop.

It enables these two groups with very different perspectives to come together for a forward-looking discussion about information and its role in generating business value. Surrounded and guided by a collection of 7-foot-tall graphic panels, senior business and IT leaders engage in conversations around information domains such as big data, social media, information foundations, governance, the transition journey, and more. At the end of the day, the client distills these conversations to map out their journey with executive-level priorities and plans for a proactive transformation.

Though the client participants actually hold the conversation amongst themselves, senior HP information and industry experts act as facilitators, asking questions, lending perspective to the conversation and providing recommendations. We help them put realized value at the center of everything and think about how information can improve key aspects of their business. We guide them to ask the right questions and think strategically about information and how it will change their business in the coming years. While the client understands its business problems and the analytical deficiencies that hinder problem resolution, HP experts help them understand information management and analytic approaches that can solve their challenges and drive business benefits.