How to define information or data strategy?

-

Information or data strategy is a part of the overall corporate or business strategy. Information (including data) is an important strategic business asset. Thus, information assets should be managed and treated in the similar way as we manage other business assets. An actionable information strategy is required to for the effective handling of information across the enterprise, irrespective of their size, for achieving the business goals and reducing risk including compliance to regulatory requirements and standards.  

This post provides and discusses a simple and practical template for defining the information strategy as a part of the business or cooperate strategy. Information strategy can be defined at the ecosystem, enterprise, business function, business area or capability level as appropriate to your context and needs. Information strategy has following key 8 elements (Figure 1): Mission & Vision, Levers & Value Driver, Goals & Objective, Strategies & Tactics, Change, Strategic Architecture, Roadmap and Strategic Governance.  


Figure 1. Information Strategy V 2.0 (Asif Gill 2021)

Mission & Vision

It defines the purpose and aspiration vison for handling the information within the given context and scope. 

Levers & Value Drivers

It defines the levers, such as key capabilities; and value drivers, such as increase revenue, reduce cost, reduce risk, increase resilience to support the mission and vision.

Goals & Objective

Vision is further decomposed into information goals and related objectives. This could be further organised into different goal themes or areas.   

Strategies & Tactics

Strategies and tactics are defined using the information levers for achieving he information goals and objectives. 

Change

Threats and opportunities including information maturing and related performance levels are defined for the current and target states. Here, the focus is: What and where do we need to change?

Strategic Architecture

A high-level target state strategic information (data) architecture is defined to address the identified changes in alignment with the strategic goals. It also includes information subject area model, lifecycle, value chain, and operating model.

Roadmap

Strategic initiatives are configured into a roadmap for iteratively and incrementally achieving the desired information state.

Strategic Governance

Guiding principles are defined. Monitoring and adaptation mechanisms are established to oversee and facilitate the information strategy execution.

This post provides a quick overview of the information or data strategy template and its elements. 

Comments

  1. jamaljadoon5 September 2021 at 20:58

    Great work Asif thanks for sharing

    ReplyDelete
  2. Unknown12 September 2021 at 14:19

    Wow Asif that is incredibly useful I think. Very relevant to where my PhD is going, so would like to discuss sometime, but great work in any case.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What is Information? A Theory of Information Trilogy

-
Image
A Theory of Information Trilogy for Information Ecosystem by Asif Gill Information is/of Everything (IioE) We hear many definitions of information and related concepts such as data, information itself, knowledge and intelligence. Well, all these definitions seem useful from information probability, quantification, measurement, storage, processing and management perspective. We still wonder what is "it" and how to identity "it", which we call "information". This blog defines and describes nature ecosystem inspired definition of information, which is called here a "Theory of Information Trilogy" (ToIT).  This theory is defined with a view to define and identify information in complex and heterogenous information ecosystems.  This theory defines that the information is (1) matter and (2) energy, which has different (3) states or forms. Matter and energy flow in the natural ecosystem. Further, from natural ecosystem, these 3 matter, energy and their ...
Read more

Circular Information Lifecycle Management for Enabling Circular Economy

-
Image
Circular economy is about recycling, remanufacturing, reusing  products, services and information for continuous value re-co-creation while reducing waste and enhancing positive economic, environmental and social impacts. This requires to re-conceptualize and re-design the economic ecosystems and business models for optimisation and innovation.  Information management is extremally important to provide intelligence & insights for effective decision making  and actions enabling circular economy. This article presents the following circular information lifecycle management for enabling circular economy.  In circular information lifecycle management (CILM), information can be restored and recycled like another product or service in the circular economy.  The CILM is composed of six key stages: discover & collect, classify & secure, prepare & release, access & use, archive & purge, and restore & recycle.  Circular Information Lifecyc...
Read more

AI-enabled Intelligent Enterprise: AI Co-pilots

-
Image
AI-enabled Intelligent Enterprise  There is an increasing interest in Artificial Intelligence (AI)  systems for decision making, productivity gain, better quality products and services etc. There is a fear or assumption that AI systems will replace human. We should not assume that AI systems will replace humans, rather we can look at them as our agent or  assistants.  Human is the "Principal" who delegates the tasks to the AI system that is called an "Agent". Thus, there is a principal-agent relationship (delegation) between the human and AI system.   AI Co-pilot There are several facets of AI systems, in particular the AI co-pilot system that can assist humans for carrying out tasks on their behalf. These AI co-pilots can be embedded across the enterprise value chain. This article discusses the AI-enabled intelligent enterprise and the applicability of AI co-pilots across the connected core value chain of (1) strategy, (2) architecture, (3) development and...
Read more