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6 Ways to Measure the Value of Your Information Assets
Last week we talked about how everything is measurable and it is necessary for organizations to measure the value of IT so that the entire organization sees the importance of IT. This author of this article speaks with Doug Laney, research vice president for Gartner Inc., who says there is a gap between the realized and potential value of information. Laney gives his six models for how businesses can treat data as an asset in order to help close that gap.
Non-financial Methods
1. Intrinsic value of information – breaks data into characteristics such as accuracy, accessibility, completeness, then rates each characteristic and tallies for final score.
2. Business value of information – measures data characteristics in relation to business processes.
3. Performance value of information – measures data impact on key performance indicators over time.
Financial Methods
4. Cost value of information – measures the cost of “acquiring or replacing lost information” as well as lost revenue caused by loss of data
5. Economic value of information – measures how data contributes to revenue
6. Market value of information – measures the revenue generated by “selling, renting or bartering” corporate data.
Do you agree with the methods Laney suggests? Are their other ways you would measure the value of data? Which methods do you think would be most effective at convincing your CEO that data is an asset to your company?
How To Succeed When Your Boss Doesn’t Have Time For You
This article suggests two pieces of advice for inattentive supervisors:
1) Take Charge- Set up a weekly or biweekly meeting with your boss in advance.
2) Find Feedback Elsewhere- Seek advice from experienced coworkers.
Personally, I think this article is terrible. If your only attempt for reaching out to a supervisor (before giving up and asking someone else) is setting up a meeting, then you’re probably going to end up disappointed. The whole reason you can’t meet with your boss is because (s)he doesn’t have enough time- so why would set up a meeting to take up more of his/her time?
A boss without any spare time is a perfect scenario to employ the skills we learned by doing elevator pitches. Utilize the time that they spend riding in elevators, taking the bus, walking to work etc.. That way, you’re not taking up more of their time, you’re just filling in the free space in which they really can’t do anything except stand/walk.
How to Report Progress
With our own progress reports coming due each week, I thought I would share this article that has some pointers for how to effectively communicate the status of a project. The author, Rob Redmond, states that to write an excellent status report you need to understand the three components of status, how to write brief details, and what key data is needed by management.
He describes the three components of status as:
- Overall: The overall project health
- Milestones: Major accomplishments with accompanying dates
- Issues: Obstacles to successful project completion
He then goes on to explain the concept of “brief details,” in which he suggests that when reporting a status you:
- Use bullet points instead of prose
- Avoid unnecessary titles
- Shorten sentences as much as possible
- Avoid adverbs
Lastly, key project data that should be communicated includes:
- Project Name
- Overall health (red, yellow, green can be used here)
- Current completion (in %)
- Expected project completion
- If you are ahead/behind schedule, if so, how much
- Issues you face
Do you agree with the author’s three-point structure for status reports? What do you think goes into writing a good status report? How have your status reports evolved after taking MIS 3535?
Sustainable Competitive Advantage through IT Innovation
Today in class, we debated the commoditization of information technology, an idea largely attributed to author Nicholas Carr. Our debate piqued my interest, so I aimed to investigate what businesspeople and technologists thought about Carr’s bold statement. My search brought me to page 99 of Carr’s personal blog, which gave me insight into just how large of a “splash” the article made in the business and technical communities. Unsurprisingly, the most fiery rebuttals came from heads of organizations centered around IT innovation (“IT ‘Is’ the Business”-type companies). Carr provides a link to an article detailing the manner in which Intel’s CEO “fires back” with an opposing viewpoint. Carr subsequently quotes Bill Gates as proclaiming that IT would not matter only if technology were perfect or simply could not be improved further; both conditions, obviously, do not describe contemporary IT.
In my exploration of the topic, I became more sure of my own stance. Particularly, I dislike Carr’s claim that IT is “no longer a source of advantage at the firm level.” Through innovation, a company can certainly gain a short-lived advantage over other firms. Perhaps what Carr more precisely means (at the risk of putting words in his mouth) is that IT alone does not result in a sustainable competitive advantage, a condition that many of us are discussing in BA4101. In other words, a single IT innovation only results in a limited and brief advantage over rivals.
To prompt further discussion, I offer this question: how can a business encourage and attain sustainable IT innovation? What types of cultural, financial, and motivating factors might promote such an endeavor?
Effective Elevator Pitches
Cliff Ennico says your elevator pitch should do three things, while not making three big mistakes. He says in your pitch you should introduce yourself, talk about the most important feature of your business plan, and get the person excited and wanting to hear more from you. These are very similar to the things we talked about in class. He says that you should not describe the “skills rather than the purpose”. Many of the people who went over time in their elevator pitches got too into the details of their application. The next thing he said people do is not tell an interesting story. If people are not interested in what you have to say they will tune you out. We talked in class about opening up with the problem and following with how your application fixes that problem. The last thing Ennico says people do is not rehearsing or being unprepared. While we all know what our applications do fitting that information into 30 seconds is difficult without preparing first. Sitting down and thinking of what three things you want to convey will help get your message across.
Do you agree with Ennico’s points?
What things do you think should be included in a good elevator pitch?
What things do you think people tend not to do well when it comes to elevator pitches?
Government IT: 5 Ways to Measure Value
This week we’ve had interesting discussions on gauging the value of IT. While I was researching ways to measure the value IT brings to the table, I stumbled upon this article. According to InformationWeek.com, there are 5 ways to measure the value of IT.
- Create metrics where IT influences mission outcomes. Work with key stakeholders whose processes are impacted from the IT investment.
- Develop metrics that measure IT project outcomes on multiple dimensions. Link the metrics with the organization’s strategic objectives.
- Collect good baseline data on measures. Make sure the data that is collected is valid and reliable. The data should include normal operating conditions as well as operations under stress.
- Use dashboard communications. By communicating metrics to stakeholders through the use of dashboards, it lessens the likelihood that the reports will be overlooked. Traditional email reports are often times ignored.
- Share your experiences building metrics and evaluation programs with other CIOs. It gives you the chance to learn what works well and what doesn’t.
Do you agree or disagree with the 5 ways to measure IT? What are some other ways IT can be measured?
The Importance of a Good Organizational Structure
A good organizational structure allows an organization to thrive in many ways. Having a good organizational structure, allows the company to identify additional talent needed to take on any additional projects and to meet project deadlines. Since a good organizational structure ensures that the right people are in the right places, it allows for the company to be more efficient and put its best foot forward. Roles and job descriptions are clearly defined, which eliminates confusion as well as redundancy. This helps for goals to be achieved and helps with job coordination. Having a chain of command in place, allows for information to be passed more efficiently. These are some of the many benefits of having a good organization structure.
What other advantages do organizations reap from having a good organizational structure? Are there any disadvantages?
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/importance-good-organizational-structure-3792.html
The Next Big Technological Hub
In class this week, we talked a lot about the internal structures of organizations, but what about the geographic location of it’s headquarters? We know that some sort of distribution is necessary to create redundancy (safety) for company data, but where companies locate it’s central “hub” is completely up to them.
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2015/jan/26/next-silicon-valley/
In this article, it discusses the prospect of Las Vegas becoming the new Silicon Valley. The article states that there is 6 major factors that will either make or break Vegas’ future:
1) Education
2) Connectivity
3) Financial
4) Transportation
5) Culture
6) Tony Hsieh’s Downtown Project
With a lost cost of living, cheap travel, a plethora of tech start-ups and a world-renowned reputation (whether good or bad), do you guys think that Las Vegas has the potential to become the next big technological hub?
Is Having No Job Titles a Viable Organizational Architecture?
http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2012-04-27/why-there-are-no-bosses-at-valve
I’ve noticed that many of the most innovative IT companies seem to incorporate some seemingly unorthodox organization architectures. One of the prime examples of this is with Valve Corporation, in which there are no job titles. Whenever there is a new project, employees get to choose which aspect of the project they wish to work on. Valve employees appreciate this approach in that they can get their hands dirty in whichever aspect of the company they want. CEO Gabe Newell provided one example of an animator from the film industry who specialized in just mouth animations. But once he started working at Valve, quickly realized that he was longer confined to working on just mouth animations, but could instead work on whatever animation he wanted. This welcomes creativity among employees.
It may seem like this type of organizational architecture would result in not much work being done, or for there to be work that no one will choose to work on. However, Valve continues to create some of the most innovative and praised games, and their Steam market has proven to be an ingenious business model that benefits both the company and developers. Although not explicitly stated in the article, there are still employees who act as “managers” for projects. There may be no job titles, but there still needs to be some sort of structure and people who can keep track of the work being done.
What do you guys think of this type of organizational architecture? Is it always a viable option, or is it more suited for companies that strive to create innovative products and solutions? I personally think it’s a great approach for sparking innovation and creativity among employees, but also think that most employees will end up working on the same aspects of each project anyway. For example, in my group for this course, we each already have defined roles and divide the work to be done for each week, even though we could really work on whatever we want.
Cirque du Soleil Drives Creativity and Expansion with SAP Solutions
After reading the case study on Cirque Du Soleil, I wanted to learn a bit more about the business and specific systems that the corporation utilizes. What fascinated me the most had to be the aspect of how the business is essentially on wheels, and how they foster a successful company when on tour with some of the main systems being miles and miles away. Innovation and creativity play a huge factor in today’s thriving businesses, and it may seem as if for a business on wheels to be a difficult task, but this article proves the opposite. Being different as an organization does not hold Cirque back, but inspires them to continue to be different. As Olivier Gariepy, Senior Business Analyst at Cirque du Soleil said:
“Because creativity is the driving force of our company, we in IT need to be creative ourselves. We can’t turn down a creative idea because it doesn’t fit with our existing technology.”
The integration of SAP for Cirque was a task that most definitely was not simple and easy to implement, but is truly paying off now, saving outrageous amounts of money and allowing the business to be multitudes more efficient. “The implementation of SAP solutions has helped Cirque du Soleil optimize and review some of its business processes while collecting some valuable business data. And the next step is leveraging that data further.” It will truly be interesting to see what else the show will offer as times change and people’s interests evolve with culture and innovation.
If you would like to read more about the topic I found this article very interesting: http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Assets/Case-Studies/2011/July/Cirque-Du-Soleil-Drives-Creativity-And-Expansion-With-SAP-Solutions
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