Enterprise Information Management

Every one's been talking about "Enterprise" word, and BI is no exception. We all have been hearing and providing multiple roadmaps on Enterprise BI/Reporting, & agree that its not an easy nut to crack - multiple reasons attributed to it. Diversified business, products, customers, geographies organization operate globally, departmental goals and systems to support them never were built to hand shake. What this effectively boils down to is a huge data store which is there to sort our problems, but instead we got lost in trying to integrate, and make business/strategic sense out of this.

The Challenge - If we look at the history and mind you its not a changed world as we speak, there are isolated efforts in organizations on Data Integrations, Data Management Initiatives (like Quality, Profiling, MDM), Metadata, Corporate Performance Management. Net result, lot of investment in IT  systems to bring the much needed Information from Huge pile of data stores and yet Information is at large!! There came an Avatar for rescue, and the idea is to set what's wrong, bring collaboration amongst all those isolated efforts and drive in common direction of organizational goals. No prizes for guessing this Avatar - EIM, the real prize is in realizing the need and importance of EIM for the organization.

Let me make an attempt to define this Avatar: A coordinated effort and initiative to bring together the Enterprise wide Information for driving the Organizational goals at Strategic, Operational and Tactical levels. If I were to list down the key terms comprising EIM,I would choose following:
- Data from Source Systems (Structured and un-structured)
- Interfaces
- Data Integration
- Data Transformation & Aggregation
- Information Dissemination (Portals, Extracts, Reporting Applications, OLAP Cubes, Feeds etc)
- Aligning Data (drilling to Tactical and Operational levels) to Strategic Objectives
- Standardize the Technology and tools across the Organization
- Best practices in Industry on Data Integration, ETL, Data Warehouse/Data Marts/Data Store, Reporting, Metadata, MDM

Few of the business initiatives which where EIM becomes important and strategic arm for any organization, and without a firm EIM in place achieving those is like a nightmare
- Regulatory Compliance (BASEL-II, HIPAA etc)
- Data Governance and Data Quality Enterprise Wide
- Master Data Management, CDI/PDI
- Align Business with IT or vice versa
- Leveraging Pooling of resources and cross departmental data sharing
- Information Risk management and data Security

Today the data that gets integrated from multiple data sources with organization & bigger challenge is to bring together the structured and un-structured data (comprises of over 70% untapped potential) together for decisioning. This data ventually flows to various users at different levels of organizational hierarchy. If we pick Retail business to illustrate -
At Operational levels: Right from POS (for right pricing, discounts etc), to store owner managing the floor spacing and food stocks on shelf, to Warehouse managers integrating orders to supply chain and maintaining optimal inventory, to logistics manager for deliveries or warehouse replenishments to  performance reporting on daily basis.
At Tactical and Analysis levels : Business Analysts, Marketing specialist doing analysis on operational level data gathered and identifying issues, problems before they scale large. Do reporting to higher levels on Departmental performances, financial performances
At Strategic Levels : All the above rolls on to strategic level aiding decision points, refocus on strategies or go aggressive in specific geographies, check on the profitability and organization financial performances.

With that level of decision makers involved and accessing information, the need of the hour is a solution that holds all of those pieces together under a common data Governance Umbrella and a common language spoken across the organization - This is how i view EIM as.

In continuation of this I am planning to elaborate on pros, cons and myths on EIM, and how should one approach towards a successful EIM which can showcase a transparent ROI with equipping one with effective decisioning power.

Do share your views and experiences with EIM world.

Posted by Yogesh Bhatt at 01:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I was browsing through the net last week when I came across a research which claims that the average attention span of an internet user is dropping and is approximately 4 seconds currently.  Now that was a shocking statistic considering that if the users do not pay attention, then what is the point of millions of dollars of investments made by companies into rich website and online advertising?

I guess I wasn’t the first one to arrive at this conclusion. After a little more digging, I came across the concept of Attention Economy . Basically information on the web has exploded and the choice available to the end user is making it more and difficult for them to be able to filter out what they are really interested in. This affects both users looking for information they need as well as or organizations who are creating the information for you. So organizations have started to realize that your attention is becoming a scarce commodity and are willing to do anything and everything possible to grab it, maybe even pay for it. So what impact will this trend have on the space of Information management, especially portals, content management and search? Here are some thoughts:

Is Personalization overrated?

Personalization has been one of the core features of portal products. But it is rarely used to its full-extent. It is just not considered worth the money. But as the attention market heats up, personalization will become the differentiating factor. The better the personalization, the sooner the end user can find the information they need.

How personalized is personalized enough?

Most people think that personalization based on demographic information like location, language and age or organization specific information like membership, groups and department is enough. But these factors rarely help you understand the user intimately.  One technique which has gathered momentum is analytics based personalization. User behavior is tracked and used to predict what they might like. This is more effective and it lets you get closer to the subconscious mind of the user, even if they do not explicitly call it out.

But is this personalized enough. Not nearly. Web 2.0 changed everything again. Collaborative filtering is another technique which has emerged which helps leverage crowd intelligence. Analytics are gathered from multiple users and used to make recommendations on what you will like. This goes closer to the subconscious of the user as it analysis not only what you have done in the past, but also what other similar users did in the past.

End of Information Portals?

So I get thinking, If someone can really personalize the information and deliver it to me, do I really need a Rich, attractive Portal with heap loads of content. Maybe not. What I need is an Attention Management system which knows and learns what I like, which goes and fetches the information I am interested in , which lets me configure that information and view it the way I want to.

Putting it all together – An Attention Management System (AMS)

So how will personalization change from what exists today in the form of personalization engines and portals? I believe the entire machinery of information generation and delivery will be tuned to deliver personalized content. An Attention management System might have the following components :

a)      Personalization Information source – This will be the component which provides the information required for executing the personalization rules. This could further be divided into

1.       Implicit information source -  This includes well know information about the user like location, department, groups etc. usually stored in directories.

2.      Explicit information source – This includes information provided by the user in terms of their areas of interest, likes and dislikes, opt-in/opt-outs etc. which is stored in systems like portals or social networking sites.

3.     Behavioral information  - Information about the browsing behavior of the user e.g. sites visited, time spent online.

4.     Collaborative information – Collective information about browsing habits of numerous users , and their interests. This could be gathered

There are concepts like Attention Trusts which might emerge as the source of majority of this information.

b)      Content source:  This will be the source of content that needs to be personalized. It could be content management systems, feeds or applications. But the change will be that it will no longer be enough to just create the entire page and tag it. Content will have to be created to be consumable in a semantic way. This is because instead of it being directly consumed by end users, it will be read and filtered by Personalization engines. So the simpler you make it for the personalization engines to find, the better.

c)       Content categorization engine : Personalization engine may not be able to pick up raw content, as they will not be able to read and categorize content. They can only provide a recommendation on the kind of information to pickup. Categorization will need to be done by another specialized component, and what better solution than to use a search engine. Search engines can read both the metadata as well as contents and categorize the content into different buckets e.g. news, United states, athletics, home improvement etc. When the recommendation engine throws out a recommendation, it can be matched with these categories to pick up the content. Ofcourse, Web 2.0 also plays a role here. Collaborative tagging can help categorize the content better through collective intelligence.

d)      Personalization decision system: This will be very similar to the personalization engines of today. This is where the rules for personalization will be written and executed. This engine will utilize the rules and the information from the personalization sources to provide a recommendation. These engines might evolve as standards like JSR94 and collaborative filtering algorithms mature. This will be the heart of the system, and the vendor who gets this right will win the game.

e)      Content Delivery system: Structured websites (read portals) might be a thing of the past. Instead, a Attention Management system might give you a completely configurable front-end (read Mashups). You will be able to assemble your portal by puling together attention blocks and configuring them to show information of a particular kind e.g. news, quotes, Tweets, shopping,  books, music, etc. The Attention management system will use its personalization engine to deliver the best content in that block. The content Delivery system could also become the source of behavioral information as it can track what you are clicking on.

The Attention Management Cycle: Spinning the Web

Well, what I mean by the Attention management cycle is that soon the web will go into a spin. This will be a continuous cycle of improvement where user analytics will feed the personalization information sources, which will lead to better content and better tagging, which in turn leads to better personalization, which in turn will lead to a satisfied end user who can give better analytics. This cycle will continuously strive towards a more satisfied customer. Content producers will win if they make their content easily consumable by personalization engines. Portal providers and search providers will win if they can get the personalization game right. 

The core of the attention management cycle will be the accuracy of personalization. This accuracy will rely on analytics information. As time goes by, information about you will not be free. You can protect this information and chose to share it or not. Some ideas like Attention Trust are a strong indication of a move in that direction. What this means is that if you can protect information about you, both explicit and implicit (analytics), you could also monetize it by charging direct money or points which you can redeem at the site you share your attention with.

 Thoughts?

Posted by Ritesh Radhakrishnan at 03:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Let me try to explain. Do you know that Nervous System consists of two parts – Central and Peripheral Nervous Systems.  The central system - containing brain and spinal cord – coordinates all parts of bodies. The peripheral Nervous System – containing sensory and other neurons to connect to other systems and central system – controls certain body functions independently. Central and Peripheral Nervous System together controls the behavior of human being.

Based on above brief explanation, I dare to comment that it is mostly (not completely) analogous to BI/DW architecture of Federated Architecture. So if you assume our body to be an enterprise with regional spread, then peripheral nervous system is the regional DW managing its local requirements independently and sometimes with HQ help. While central nervous system is the Corporate HQ that controls all parts of organization with input from regions. And together through their activities, they display the organization behavior.

Do you find it Interesting? – please comment.

In next blog, I plan to write on how ‘Data capture and integration offerings of product companies’ are still way behind the way we human capture and integrate information. There is a great learning and can be applied in next steps in EIM.

Posted by Vilas Appaji Ahire at 01:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)