We believe that now more than ever is essential for the companies to focus on how to efficiently manage information.

They now have much more information and are conducting more integration among systems than ever before. The information is the most crucial asset of the business. As application packages and integration technologies and methods continuously change, the data in the most part stays the same. We insist that cost effective business and technology change processes can only be achieved with a successful approach for managing information.

An information development approach is needed to running a progressive organization.

While it is possible to get there in "small steps", we believe most organizations require transformational change in how they manage information.

Information Development allows organizations to treat information as a strategic asset through their complete supply chain. This approach starts with how information is created, accessed, presented, and used in decision-making. The approach ends with how this information is shared, kept secure, stored, and destroyed.

Information Development is a key concept of our methodology and in summary is:

§  Driving an overall approach through information strategy

§  Enabling people with the right skills to build and manage new information system while creating a culture of information excellence

§  Moving to new organizational models that delivers an improved information management competency

§  Improving processes around information compliance, policies, practices, and measurements

§  Delivering contemporary technology solutions that meet the needs of today’s organizations

This Information Development approach enables:

§  Real-time synchronization and transformation of information between systems. This automates integration and promotes reuse across a federated enterprise.

§  The exposure of shadow processes and business rules. These are typically embedded inside application and integration functions as reusable metadata

§  The standardization of interchange information into a common enterprise format to avoid stovepipe "application-focused" integration

§  Building integrated repositories of information for use by the enterprise as a whole.

§  Improved information quality in a proactive and reusable fashion

§  Flexible access to search across structured, semi-structured, and unstructured content

§  The ability to supply this information in a consistent form to any channel

§  The ability to make fact-based business decisions and drill-down, drill across, and aggregate analytical information

§  The ability to measure both the value of any information asset and the resulting business benefits of its improvement

§  An organization that is structured in the most efficient manner to deliver information solutions for the business

Although the approach proposed in EIM methodology won't provide magic capabilities to solving Information Management problems, it is a good start to create a mechanism to address this very complex problem of managing information and the business processes it supports whilst providing capabilities for dealing with information concepts in ways not possible in the past.

This Information Development architecture can pave the way for robust application development and will permit pro-active infrastructure and information access to the Application Development environment.

The capabilities it will enable will be complimented by emerging standards in business and technology and will provide a number of flexible paths for the enterprise to move forward in the years to come. Information Development -for the first time- can get ahead of the Application Development curve.