Information-Driven Business: How to Manage Data and Information for Maximum Advantage

Information doesn't just provide a window on the business, increasingly it is the business. The global economy is moving from products to services which are described almost entirely electronically. Even those businesses that are traditionally associated with making things are less concerned with managing the manufacturing process than they are with maintaining their intellectual property.  INFORMATION-DRIVEN BUSINESS: How to Manage Data and Information for Maximum Advantage (John Wiley & Sons; $49.95) helps readers understand this change and find the value in data.  The book explains techniques that organizations can use, how businesses can apply them immediately, and provides the foundation on which analytical and data rich organizations can be created.

The book comprehensively tackles the challenge of managing information, starting with why information has become important and how it is encoded, through to how to measure its use. At each stage, INFORMATION-DRIVEN BUSINESS reveals the link between the techniques being used and how any business can apply them immediately, with almost instant benefits.  Author Robert Hillard draws from techniques he has applied in some of the world's largest companies and government departments.  Hillard reveals how business leaders can more effectively govern, manage, and exploit their company's most important asset: information.  He explains, "The question that any organization needs to ask itself is whether it is using information to create the most dynamic, responsive, and adaptable enterprise possible or is it using information to satisfy the need for power by a privileged few." 

Guidance is provided on topics including:

• The Internet's role in creating the information economy
• Measuring the quantity and usability of information
• The goals of information governance
• Describing structured data
• The role of master data management
• Defining an enterprise information architecture  

In almost every organization, executives and technology professionals are increasingly being made accountable for the mountains of data that exist in databases, file systems, and other repositories. How wisely or poorly an organization manages that information drives its success or failure. Professionals can realize the greatest possible value for their business with the solid guidance found in INFORMATION-DRIVEN BUSINESS.  The easy-to-apply techniques, shows readers how to pragmatically apply it to real business problems, with practically instant results.  

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

ROBERT HILLARD is an original founder of MIKE2.0 (www.openmethodology.org), which provides a standard approach for information and data management projects. He has held international consulting leadership roles and provided advice to government and private sector clients around the world. He is a partner with Deloitte with more than twenty years' experience in the discipline, focusing on standardized approaches to information management, including being one of the first to use XBRL in government regulation and the promotion of information as a business asset rather than a technology problem. Find out more at www.infodrivenbusiness.com. 

 INFORMATION-DRIVEN BUSINESS

How to Manage Data and Information for Maximum Advantage

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Publication date: August 30, 2010

                                                                                            $49.95; Hardcover; 240 pages; ISBN: 978-0-470-625