A Strategy for Getting the Right Information to Your Managers - David Goldstein

Managers at large organizations are under increasing pressure to make better decisions faster. These managers are reacting to greater competition, globalization and increased scrutiny from shareholders and regulators. They are in turn pressuring their IT organizations to deliver the data they need from the organization’s transaction processing systems to the desktops of key knowledge workers.

Jack Rockart, a Senior Lecturer Emeritus at the MIT Sloan School and one of the driving forces behind seminal IT concepts like critical success factors (CSFs) and executive support systems (ESS), has just written an article that outlines how an organization can implement a strategy to deliver this important information to managers and knowledge workers. The article is called, “Information: Let’s Get it Right” and was published in the MIS Quarterly Executive (MISQE). In this newsletter article, I will summarize the approach that Jack Rockart advocates.

Focus on Business Process

To get managers the right information, do not ask them what information they need. The answer to this question is usually, “I need everything” or “What can you give me?” Also, do not try to boil the ocean. If you attempt to figure out all the information needed by a group of managers, you will spent too much time in requirements gathering and not deliver valuable information in a timely manner.

Instead, learn about a business-critical business process that they are managing. Once you understand the process, you can work with them to both design a process that leads to better decision making and determine the information that managers need to implement this process.

Rockart focuses on the management of commercial customers at Fleet. He discusses how Fleet designed this process to support both customer relationship managers and product managers and provided them with the information and tools they needed to identify the most profitable customers and support those customers with the appropriate products and services.

At KMA, we have applied this same approach to implementing dashboards to support the deal tracking process in an asset-based financing firm, the claims process in an insurance company, and the tax collection process for a government agency. In each case, the process focus allows us to quickly deliver the right information to the management team. The team uses the information to identify problems faster and respond to them more effectively.

Critical Success Factors

Rockart identifies four factors that are critical to the success of an information delivery initiative:

(1) Vision—Senior management at your organization must see that providing a specific group of managers with the information they need will improve the performance of a critical business process. This vision is needed to focus the information delivery effort and garner the resources needed to carry it out.

(2) Executive sponsorship—The investment needed to deliver management information is often significant. Projects take months to implement and require the effort of key members of the line and IT organizations. Senior leadership must back these projects from the start and through their delivery to insure their success.

(3) Project leadership—In addition to the executive sponsor, a project leader with strong business and technology skills is needed to keep the project moving forward and deal with the uncertainties that arise as the project progresses.

(4) Listening and learning—The implementation team must be flexible in delivering information to managers. They must ‘stay close’ to the knowledge workers and managers as they begin to use the system.

Rockart also identified the two critical technologies needed to implement these information delivery initiatives:

(1) Information warehouses—The backbone of the initiative is an information warehouse that contains the data needed by knowledge workers and managers. This data is often extracted from the organization’s transaction processing systems and delivered in a form that allows managers to quickly identify and react to problems.

(2) Information portal—The information in the warehouse is delivered in a portal which provides a single point of access for the knowledge workers and managers. The portal makes it significantly easier for managers to find and use this information.

The growth in the capabilities of and the reduction in costs of information warehouse and portal technologies have made it easier for organizations to get the right information to their managers. While technology is no longer a constraint to information delivery, organizations still require skilled hands and significant effort to understand the requirements of managers, to find the data they need, and to design and deliver this information.

Want to Learn More?

If you would like a complimentary reprint of “Information: Let’s Get it Right,” please send me an e-mail (david@kmainc.com). In addition, please contact me if you have any questions or comments on this article or on KMA’s capabilities to help your organization with an information delivery strategy.