Who Owns Corporate Information?

Much of modern management discussion revolves around the concept of "ownership".  Yes, we all work in a matrixed world, but -- at the end of the day -- there's some idea of who owns the overall outcome.

Today, I'd like to explore the concept of "information ownership" from a corporate or organizational perspective, how we see this rapidly shifting from individual business functions to the lucky folks in IT, and what they might be thinking about to prepare themselves for this new responsibility.

Having Fun In Your Next Management Meeting

If you're feeling a bit twisted, the next time you're in a cross-functional management group, ask the question "who owns customer information?". 

Sales?  Marketing?  Customer Service?  Finance?

Specifically -- who's responsible that it's accurate, who's responsible that it's available when needed, that it's managed cost effectively, who's responsible that it's protected against loss or unauthorized use, and who's responsible to make sure that the company is getting all the value it can from customer information?

Now, stand back and watch the fur fly. 

The first trial answer is the function that created the information.  But if you push on that a bit, you'll probably find that the sales organization (as an example) doesn't lose a lot of sleep over things like compliance, business continuity and enterprise search, or those guys in marketing. 

At least, the sales guys I know.

Here's the problem -- in many companies, there's no one looking after the entire information portfolio: across all business units, across all requirements present and future.  The portfolio -- in aggregate -- is incredibly expensive, incredibly valuable and -- more and more -- incredibly risky. 

Now, no one will deny that information is pretty important stuff to most companies.  It can be expensive to manage, it can get you in a lot of trouble, and -- if used the right way -- can be used to make money in new ways. 

And in most companies, information flows all over the organization.  The concept of "ownership" is important, because the stakes are rising. 

Do we leave that up to the individual business units?  Legal?  HR?  Marketing?  Maybe we create an entirely new business function to do this?  Nahhh ...

The inconvenient truth is that -- logically -- there's only one place that can assume this role across the organization -- and that's IT. 

Yep, the Information Technology guys.  Hey, it's even in their title.  At least the "information" part.

It's happened before

Let's talk about something else that's important to a company: money. 

At most companies, there's a function that knows where all the money is.  It can account for it, it protects it against loss or unauthorized use, it optimizes how it flows through the company, and it's looking for ways to create new value from it.   

The function is called Finance.  It's run by the CFO.  Individual business units don't own the money, the corporation does, and Finance sets the rules and runs the systems.  For a public company, if the CFO can't implement financial management policy, they get very famous in a very bad way.

Now, let's get back to information.  Does your CIO know where all the information comes from?  How it's used?  How it's stored, protected, optimized and leveraged?  Maybe ... and maybe not. 

If information is money, will it be thought of any different in the future?

Wouldn't you agree that individual business units shouldn't own information?  That information belongs to the company?  And that IT should set the rules and run the systems?

Are we ready for this?

Is IT ready to move beyond service levels, costs and new projects -- and take an executive view of the corporate information portfolio?

Catalysts for change

It's the unfortunate truth for human behavior, but -- more often than not -- we need something bad to happen to motivate significant change.  And there are plenty of opportunities for that to happen all around us.

Back many years ago, we were offering SRDF -- remote replication for business continuity.  We'd go visit customers, tell them what risks we could protect them against, and they'd listen politely and frequently tell us it wasn't in the budget.

We'd leave our card anyway. 

Because, sooner or later, many of the people we had talked to ended up having a Very Bad IT Day.  Sometimes a Very Bad IT Week.

And, all of the sudden, having a second-site recovery plan became a matter of some urgency.

I've seen the same thing with email management.  No, we really don't want to do too much with email management, because it's not in the budget.  That is, until Legal has a Bad Lawsuit Day, in which case IT ends up having a Bad IT Week. 

It's just started again with file management -- finding things in your file systems that could cause you problems.  No, thank you, it's really not a priority right now.

Unfortunately, of the three reasons that motivate business to spend on IT (save money, avoid risk, create new value), it's the risk thing that really motivates IT groups and the people who fund them.

So, why am I talking about this?

You probably know that I spend a fair amount of time in front of customers.  And the same thing has happened to me literally dozens of times. 

We're talking about email management, or file management, or something similar, and the customer exclaims "well, we can't do anything because management hasn't figured out what our policy should be!" 

And I have to bite my toungue.

OK, just for the sake of argument, imagine the CFO saying "well, we can't manage the money the right way, because management hasn't figured out what the policy should be!" 

I would hope that you'd quickly find a new CFO.  It's their job to lead the company in this regard. 

I know this sounds unduly harsh, but on this issue, I'm an unduly harsh kind of guy. 

My extreme view is that IT should assume this role in defining corporate policies around information management.  It's part of this "ownership" thing.  Yes, you need to work with other groups, but someone has to lead the parade. 

No one's going to do it for you. 

No one's better qualified to understand the pros and cons of different approaches.

No one's in a better position to make a huge contribution to their organization in this regard.

And, if it ends up that a bunch of people with no IT background get together, hammer out a policy, and toss it over the wall at you, don't complain that it's hard to do, or it's expensive, or whatever. 

Let me approach it another way.

With every passing week, evidence is mounting that someone needs to be looking at information as a corporate portfolio asset. 

Costs are going up, potential risks are mounting, and there's buried treasure in the information you already own.

You can look at it as a problem, or an opportunity.

So what's the EMC tie-in?

It's simple.

We believe that this new role -- viewing corporate information from a portfolio perspective -- is the job of an informationist. 

Technologists understand technology ; informationists understand information. 

Not to upset anyone, but we think that informationists will be able to create more value from IT than technologists.   They're looking at information from all three angles: saving money, avoiding risk, and creating new value.  The technology follows.

We believe that -- once you establish this informationist view -- you're going to want something different from your IT infrastructure. 

You're going to want an information infrastructure -- an environment that provides standard capabilities to store, protect, optimize and leverage information in all of its forms.

And, with all of its investments, EMC is building that information infrastructure for its customers.

So ... are you an informationist?