The Business Model

Enabling the business, managing costs, and supporting staff are all important business vision concepts. The enterprise information management (EIM) program needs to do the same things, and be structured accordingly. This chapter describes EIM as a business component. If a business user or customer or other constituent question the source or relevance of the data or content being presented, they will hesitate to take effective action. They will create or acquire their own, or come to their own conclusions. This is information mismanagement. However, society and pervasive technology are forcing organizations into taking some formal stance on their information assets. A reasonable first step is to begin to incorporate data quality and formal information management into all projects that create or rely on data to enable business actions and decisions. There are basic required components and functions that must be designed into the organization. These components and functions are not very different than the basic building blocks of any other strategic area within an organization.