IT Decision Making Requires Good Data
by Sue Dunnell
It’s often said these days that every organization is, at some level, a technology company. Regardless of the industry or the role individuals play across an enterprise, all are increasingly dependent upon IT to innovate and deliver on the promise of digital transformation.
However, before any change is made, good decisions must be made, and good decisions require good data, which must be relevant and aligned with business facts and priorities.
One article I recently read proposes a systematic approach to redesign a CMDB by focusing on vital business functions. This seems like an ideal way to build a foundation toward better decision making: work across the enterprise. And as the author noted, building a CMDB is “a management project that needs to be tied to the business.”
To tackle all IT tasks and projects driven to meet business objectives, whether old or new, simple or complex, require the same core elements:
- Accurate and actionable data
- The ability to collaborate across business silos to understand, coordinate, and align business facts, constraints, and goals with the task at hand
- A streamlined way to orchestrate the sequence of human and automated steps to execute change without bringing systems down
Siloed Tools. Siloed Data.
There are plenty of solutions specifically built to address these needs.
First, there are many sources of data – CMDBs, DCIMs, files, databases, spreadsheets. And then there are collaboration tools used across the enterprise – Slack, Asana, email, and messaging. We all know there are a multitude of documents for business strategy, policies, regulatory requirements and SLAs stored across departments.
All of these tools work well, but they don’t work together. And users have different levels of access to specific data sources, but no single person has access to all data.
Sound familiar?
We recently worked with the team at a global financial services organization that was struggling to move forward with their cloud migration plans. They lacked a central system of access for all relevant data. And, frankly, were in spreadsheet hell as they tried to gather facts and data. This meant they were making decisions in the dark, and realized that this was putting them in a very risky situation. They knew they needed to get a complete and actionable view of their environment before they could go any further. You can read the full case study here.
From our experience with this team and with countless others, we often beat the same drum: If organizations are to succeed in their efforts to innovate, they need their disparate data sources and tools to work together as a toolchain, first to aggregate and normalize data, then to consolidate it with critical business data.
Decision making is best done when all stakeholders have access to the same data, ideally in a visual and easy to map format. If you need your organization to move together to make innovation happen — and ensure that your technology is an enabler rather than a roadblock to progress, check out our Jump Start Offerings.
