Michael Blechar

When surveying stakeholders during planning activities, architects and analysts often hear a common refrain: "Managing information as an asset is core to our business strategy." While this objective has been popular for decades, it is getting renewed attention, notably from the executive suite – especially in terms of supporting business process management (BPM) and improvement opportunities enabled by service-oriented architecture (SOA) .

In my recent post “Master Data Management Enables BPM and SOA” I discussed the importance of proactively (re)designing data and creating new data services based on the needs of current and future BPM and SOA initiatives. But which information requires attention, and how should it be designed and managed?

Enterprise information is not the same as all information in your enterprise. Without this scope of understanding at the outset, the goal of managing information as an asset may quickly devolve into a "boil the ocean" activity with no tangible business result. Each day, organizations generate and consume vast amounts and different types of information, within and across their borders. Only some of this information is considered fundamental to the business strategy and worthy of enterprise-level attention. In "Gartner Defines Enterprise Information Architecture*" we stated that the focus should be on those information assets deemed to have enterprise significance or necessary to effect business change.

Definition: Enterprise information is the diverse representation of significant content that is consistently shared across multiple business processes and capabilities.

Master data is an example of enterprise information. Master data is the consistent and uniform set of identifiers and extended attributes that describe the core entities of the enterprise — and is used across multiple business processes (see "Mastering Master Data Management*"). Master data is enterprise information, because it is significant to the success of strategies requiring the accuracy and dependability of information across core processes.

I’d also like to point you to two research notes by Gartner which go into greater detail on the scope and best practices for enterprise information management:

Managing Information as an Asset: Enterprise Architects, Beware!*.  This describes differences between information assets, liabilities and distractions.  It also includes criteria for determining the impact of information on the enterprise.  Determining value based on impact is a logical place to start as well.

Best Practices for Managing Enterprise Information* uses the Run, Grow, Transform Business Value Framework to describe the principles and methods for managing enterprise information to maximize its value across the organization.

Net: Remember to coordinate changes to business processes and applications with the enterprise information architecture in order to maximize the value of information assets. It is critical to enabling BPM and SOA projects.

*Available to Gartner clients or for a fee