This is a capability maturity framework I created for a knowledge-intensive business (management consultancy). I have absorbed best practices of other frameworks and methods, particularly IVI’s IT-CMF. This framework is relatively granular in order to support innovation and business transformation as much as data governance. It deals with an environment where the data is complex and has many sources and formats.
The practice of Enterprise Information Management
What is Enterprise Information Management (EIM)?
Enterprise Information Management is our capability to manage information that has relevance and value enterprise-wide.
What is the aim of an Enterprise Information Management initiative?
The aim of the Enterprise Information Management initiative is to deliver business value from information assets by identifying and continuously improving each of the capabilities needed to manage information across the enterprise. Information gradually becomes a quantifiable asset of the enterprise by optimizing the performance of these capabilities and measuring their targeted business outcomes.
A Capability Maturity Framework as an organizing principle
What is the value of assessing capability maturity?
When we assess our current maturity level for a capability, we recognise where we are now and can set this as a baseline from where we can begin to improve. We can then agree a target maturity level and adopt the practices that cause a transition to the new level. We set an agreed period to perform the maturity transition and then re-assess to see that the practices were adopted and, importantly, that they achieved their expected business outcomes. Over several periods, we can incrementally improve each of our capabilities to an advanced stage. We can prioritize capabilities according the importance we assign them or the gap between our current and target maturity.
How do we know if we are delivering business value?
We measure the expected business outcomes of each of the practices that we adopt to increase maturity.
Why should we use this framework?
There are many capabilities that are necessary to manage information as an asset to the enterprise. If we share an agreed framework and vocabulary, we can benefit from a commonly understood assessment and tracking method to acknowledge our current capabilities and continually improve our expertise.
Where does this framework come from?
I have developed this unique Enterprise Information Management framework by adapting recommended best practices and capability maturity frameworks for information management, information technology, enterprise architecture, and related management practices. References include IVI’s IT-CMF, Gartner, IBM, Oracle, DAMA-PMBOK, Accenture, and others.
The capabilities
Information Strategy
Strategic Vision for Information
Strategic Vision for Information defines the vision and its supporting mission and values for an Enterprise Information Management (EIM) initiative. The strategic vision creates the context for how an EIM programme of activities will deliver business value to the enterprise.
Information Valuation
Information Valuation evaluates information in terms of its asset or liability value to the enterprise. Information valuation determines decisions on how an information asset should be managed.
Enterprise Information Architecture
Enterprise Information Architecture (EIA) defines the flow of all forms of enterprise information through the enterprise from sourcing, organizing, use, and through to retirement. EIA is the means of achieving an enterprise-wide standardized and integrated model for managing information assets. It provides a common business vocabulary and a high-level view of how the information strategy will be implemented.
Information Governance
EIM Executive Sponsorship
EIM Executive Sponsorship confirms that Enterprise Information Management has corporate governance, is aligned with the business strategy, and is supported at board level. Sponsorship communicates the value of EIM to the enterprise, ensures that stakeholders participate, and sees that the programme is sufficiently resourced.
EIM Steering
The Information Governance steering committee represents the stakeholders of enterprise information. The committee specifies the decision rights and accountability framework for the organization, access, and use of information assets. It acts as a forum for information consumers, owners, and stewards and is responsible for the success of the Enterprise Information Management initiative.
Information Risk Management
Information Risk Management ensures that the risks associated with holding information are identified and the information assets are secured appropriately.
EIM Resource Planning
EIM Resource Planning assesses and secures the budget, people, technologies, and other resources needed to ensure that the Enterprise Information Management programme is successfully implemented.
Information Asset Management
Information Stewardship
Information Stewards are responsible for taking care of information assets related to their information management and subject-matter expertise. They ensure that information consumers and owners have access to information assets that are fit for purpose.
Information Profiling
Information Profiling examines the content, structures, and relationships of information assets to assess their fitness for purpose – comprehensiveness, relevance, and accuracy – and to highlight anomalies that need to be addressed.
Information Life-Cycle Management
Information Life-Cycle Management ensures that information assets are effectively managed from creation or sourcing, through organization, integration and enhancement, to access and use, and finally, retirement.
Master Data Management
Master Data Management (MDM) identifies the core business entities (for example, person, company, and assignment) and manages these to maintain accurate, uniform, consistent, and comprehensive information. Master Data Management involves de-duplication and ensures the integrity of the master data following data integration.
Metadata Management
Metadata Management is the capability to describe in a formal scheme the character, context, and provenance of an information asset, and rights associated with it, to determine how it is managed through its life-cycle, including how it should be retrieved and presented. When the metadata is embedded with the data, it becomes the means by which EIM policies become machine-readable and search applications can search by meaning and related terms.
Reference Data Management
Reference Data Management is the capability to set an information asset in a meaningful context by providing vocabularies to classify attributes such as title, industry, function, location, and competency. Reference data is the basis for creating relationships between information assets and determines the ease of automated analysis.
Content Management
Content Management is the capability to deal with the challenges particular to information assets that lack structure, may exist in a variety of media, and may be contained in a variety of carrier formats. Content management takes consideration of the degree of structure and the distinction between the essence and its carrier or publishing format in determining how an information asset will be managed. (In this context, the scope of the term ‘information’ includes content in documents and rich media content such as audio, video, and still images.)
Information Sourcing
Information Sourcing is the capability to provide current, relevant, and comprehensive information that meets business requirements from the most effective and efficient source.
Information Quality
Information Quality is the capability to ensure that information is fit for purpose and meets business requirements.
Information Access and Use
Access, Identity, and Rights Management
Access, Identity, and Rights Management is the capability to ensure that information is accessed appropriately, according to permissions, by managing user identities and the rights associated with the information asset.
Information Search and Retrieval
Information Search and Retrieval is the capability to organize information and define standards so that the end user can search and retrieve relevant and comprehensive information specific to their purposes and the information is presented in a manner that enables the user to discover patterns of meaning and relationships between information assets.
Information for Business Process Management
Information for Business Process Management is the capability to ensure that information can be created, sourced, and exploited for a business process in an efficient, convenient, and effective manner.
Content Delivery and Publishing
Content Delivery and Publishing ensures that content in any format (text, image, video, audio, code, etc.) may be presented to the end-user in the most efficient and convenient format.
Information for Business Communication
Information for Business Communication is the capability to manage information and its medium to support communication, participation, collaboration, relationship-building, and engagement within the enterprise’s internal community and in the broader business community of customers, suppliers, and individuals and businesses of actual or potential value to the enterprise.
Information for Insight
Information for Insight includes research, knowledge management, business intelligence, and analytics. It is the capability to manage information quality, infrastructure, tools, and resources to ensure that the enterprise can carry out qualitative and quantitative analysis to improve processes, inform decision-making, and provide insight to the customer.
Intellectual Asset Management
Intellectual Asset Management in Enterprise Information Management is the capability to identify, capture, steward, and exploit the intellectual assets of the enterprise. Intellectual assets may be patents, copyrights, trade secrets, and proprietary know-how. Intellectual capital accounts for the difference between an enterprise’s book value and market value, and enterprise information management is fundamental to the structural intellectual capital that support human intellectual capital.
© Eibhlín Ní Oisín, Resonance Content and Archive Management Ltd.
