Performance Information Architectures

Behind every trusted knowledge source, every performance based information report, and every secure transaction, is an integrated information management strategy. Yet, information in the Internet economy involves all aspects of your organization, not just the ‘digital transaction’. This is the essence of the ‘connected organization’. What are your information management standards? Is your information architecture integrated? Will your information approach be relevant?

icorp.ca’s Information Management strategy designs incorporate the specialization of Information Architectureand the thinking that goes beyond connectedness.

Information Architecture

(in”fur-mA’shun), -n. knowledge communicated or received concerning a particular fact or circumstance; knowledge gained through study, communication, research, instruction, etc.; factual data; the act or fact of informing; important or useful facts obtained as output from a computer by means of processing input data with a program.

(är’ki-tek”chur), -n. the profession of design – open areas, communities, and other artificial constructions and environments; a fundamental underlying design of computer hardware, software, or both; the structure of anything: the architecture of information.

Information architecture describes the design components for standardized information services, information interfaces and information management models needed by an organization for business decisions. Thus, an ‘information architecture’ represents the standards, services, and functionality required by an organization to link, inform, and communicate with users across organizational boundaries to achieve a common business objective.

Although integrated management information systems enable organizations to use basic information better through high-level analyses and modeling capabilities to support decision-making, why is it so difficult to get at the information you need?

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Getting at ‘Information’

We know that ubiquitous access to ‘information’ is difficult at best and time. Getting at the information is time consuming and laborious, because legacy applications and database management techniques have created a hodge-podge of data and information stores across the organization.

The design of an information architecture for a connected organization would require answers to the following questions:

• Who owns the financial and performance information, and business processes that the applications support?
• Who owns the information application(s) that delivers functionality to a particular business process or function?
• What application models support the organization’s informational applications and what criteria will be used to decide best fit for future efforts?
• How are existing information applications and development projects integrated (ot not integrated) into the existing enterprise architecture?
• How will information resources be made accessible to the widest number of users?
  and most importantly
• Who is responsible / accountable for managing the consolidated enterprise integrated financial and performance information?

Consolidating ubiquitous access to all information in an organization becomes a strategic imperative! To achieve this goal, you will need to develop a strategic information architecture that embodies your business rules and incorporates current standards for open architectures, for example XML and XBRL. Thus, information architecture describes the standardized information services designed to support business decisions and processes to access ubiquitous information demands, and describes the interaction and interdependencies of the organization’s informational applications.

So, who is designing your Information Architecture? For more information about icorp.ca’s Information Management expertise, contact us.