Why Information
The information economy has changed business. Access to accurate, timely, and relevant information is widely recognized as a strategic imperative. As a result, information management and business intelligence have become a necessary core competency of leading businesses.
What trends are driving the influence of information? A number of business and technology forces have converged throughout the past decade to catapult the improved use of information to the top of executive priority lists.
From a business perspective, companies realize that advancing their information strategies is one of the best ways to help them differentiate and compete. It’s the foundation for performance management: using analytics to view key measures of the business, monitor and analyze them, and predict what’s likely for the future. Information is the core of business continuity, business innovation, and risk mitigation. It’s critical for globalization and M&A. And in this age of increased regulatory and compliance mandates, companies need accurate historical data for reporting purposes.
On the technology side, the information landscape is a complex one: high data volumes; varying levels of quality; different formats; innumerable sources. Synthesizing this disparate world of information, and embedding it into workflow and business processes, is the strategic IT challenge for organizations to become more efficient, effective, flexible, and agile.
