What the hell is an information delivery strategy anyway?

You got us thinking

By Dale Vile, Freeform Dynamics • Get more from this author

Posted in Business, 25th April 2007 09:56 GMT

Free whitepaper – Enabling Datacenter and Cloud Service Management for Mid-Tier Enterprises

Reg Reader Workshop OK, you got us thinking on this one. In a recent reader survey, about three quarters of you said you had an overall information delivery strategy or were putting one in place for things like business performance management or more general management information requirements.

Since then, we've been trying to figure out what you actually mean by this, so rather than keep guessing, we thought we'd ask you for a bit of clarification.

If you have a couple of minutes, we'd appreciate you enlightening us a little further in our poll below. As usual, we'll report back at the end of the week.

USER POLL

This poll is now closed.

Which of the following would you say best characterises your overall management information delivery capability today from a systems perspective? (Please choose one option)

A total mess - lots of different components with limited or no integration between them
Managed chaos - independently implemented point solutions integrated as necessary
A proper infrastructure - coherent architecture and set of standards
An integrated total solution - from a single vendor solving most your needs in this area
Limited or no capability - do little beyond basic reporting capability already in apps

What would you ideally want in terms of management information capability? (Please choose one option)

An integrated total solution from a single vendor
A coherent infrastructure blending appropriate capabilities from different vendors
Independently implemented solutions integrated as necessary
An ad hoc approach as we don't see a need to worry about integration or consistency
Don't really need for information delivery solutions beyond capability embedded in apps

In your opinion, how important are the following when putting together an information delivery strategy? (Please score each as Important, Useful or Not relevant)

Formal definition of business measures (e.g. in the form of KPIs)
Definition of information requirements for specific departments or groups of users
An overall information access security policy
Definition of relevant technical standards and information delivery mechanisms
Standardisation on specific information delivery related products and solutions
An over-arching budget for information delivery
Other (please specify)