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        IBM Lotus Domino

        Introducing the Information Agenda

        Yesterday marked the formal launch for the Information Agenda.  You may have heard us talk about the information agenda already (for example, Ambuj Goyal discussed it in detail at IOD EMEA), but starting now you're going to hear a lot more about it.  I'd like to use this opportunity to talk about why, whether you're an executive decision maker or a developer or DBA, the information agenda is important to your job.

        We're focusing on the concept of the information agenda for a simple reason. We know you already have a lot of information (if anything, you might even have too much of it).  But we have found in talking to business after business that just because you have data and content, or even a formal data warehouse strategy or ECM system, it doesn't mean you can easily answer the most pressing questions for your business (or that the CEO or VP Sales keep coming at you with).

        Questions like which customer segments are costing you the most money, or on which countries should you focus your expansion efforts.  Questions about what's happening in the business in real time, instead of what happened last quarter.  In other words, questions that might require crossing traditional information silos, connecting your client list with your customer support records, or creating a view across your ERP, procurement, and supply chain systems.

        The information agenda model is designed to allow you to step back, get your arms around all of your data, and then help you take the necessary steps so that information can become a strategic asset in running your business, so that you can make decisions based on trusted, real-time data and content.

        Because every business - and the information it has or the decisions it needs to make - is different, this isn't a case where a company can simply apply software or take a cookie-cutter approach to solve the problem.  The information agenda, however, is designed to take advantage of tools, guides, and best practices, along with commonalities within a given industry, to vastly simplify things for a business.

        What we announced yesterday is a set of tools, roadmaps, and workshops that can allow you to leverage our experience and resources - including industry-specific models across 18 industries - so that you're not starting from scratch.  This is not necessarily a small undertaking - that's why most companies haven't started thinking this way yet - but the payback is huge, and well worth the investment.

        Hopefully if you're an executive or decision maker, the benefits of having an information agenda will be fairly obvious (and if not, here's a whitepaper and video so can see it in action).  

        But what if you're a developer or DBA?  When the executives in your company start to have a clear roadmap for the information they need, you can be much more proactive in planning out your data and information strategy.  It will help you make sure that your databases and systems are aligned with the strategy of the business, allowing you to add more value to the organization than when you have to spend your time chasing down yet another ad-hoc request from the latest gung-ho VP of the day.

        Thinking back to what I heard discussed at IOD EMEA, what struck me was the analogy to the application agenda that most companies have focused on for the past two-to-three decades.  I think you'd be hard pressed to talk to a CIO today who didn't see the value from that focus on applications.  Can you imagine rolling back the clock and trying to run your business today without your ERP, CRM, SFA applications?  Following the information agenda model and turning your information into a trusted resource can return similar results for your business.  See the links below for more details and how to get started.

        Resources:



        In the News:
        ***Updated 9/4 with link to video on YouTube rather than the download page***