Business InsightsStreamline management information to improve business outcomes

Management information is the lifeblood of any business. It is unfortunate that senior executives often criticize the lack of critical business performance to help plan or improve business performance. This is generally the result of information management losing synchronization with day-to-day business expectations due to:

• business cells not coordination information needs
• change management operating in isolation of business
• Technology management losing touch with business environment

This does not need to be the case. Mapping business needs to information infrastructure provides a blueprint for business management.

Meaningful management reporting and successful business performance is based on:

• Capturing the right information
• In a place and form that is readily accessible
• Where it can be processed into a form of most use by executive and management
• To enable quick and clear performance reporting and success actioning.

The right business performance information is developed from the comparison of two separate information sources. Management of these two information cores differ:

• Benchmark information against which performance is being measured – the “expectation Information”, e.g. target performance indicators
• Performance information is the measured real-time business production.

The former is static on a daily basis and is linked to change management. That is, changing operations are normally done to improve the business expectation. Business improvement is the key driver in the need for this. It can either be applied on a finite basis, or cover the whole process, as in workflow management.

The latter production information dynamically changes on a daily basis and is derived from daily operations and risk functioning. Given the changing nature of this information, and volume generated, a different forma of information management and production ownership is required.

Having these two information sources centralized and readily accessible, provides the platform for stable and effective business reporting. This can be for performance, risk, compliance, financial or capital reporting.

Finally, this clear vision for information management needs to be known and accepted by all so that future information development can get better and not worse.