'Information Governance Initiatives Increase Its Business Value'

A new research paper sponsored and released by EMC Corporation and executed by the Economist Intelligence Unit urges organisations’ senior leadership to accelerate implementation of companywide information governance programmes that can help increase the strategic value of information throughout its lifecycle, while minimising costs and risks.

The paper titled ‘The Future of Enterprise Information Governance’ is based on a survey of senior
executives from leading companies around the world about the benefits, challenges and risks associated with developing an enterprise-wide information governance strategy. Seventy-seven percent of respondents expect information governance to be important to their company’s success through 2011, while 68 percent also expect the complexity of their company’s information governance issues will grow during that same time period.

Meanwhile, nearly two-thirds (62 percent) of respondents indicated their companies had no formal information governance programme in place, a concerning trend that may leave many corporations unprepared for new compliance mandates and open to preventable risks to sensitive information.

“Even though the standards for good governance are rising, we find that much of today’s focus around corporate governance leaves information out of the discussion,” said Frank Hauck, EMC executive vice president, Global Marketing and Customer Quality. “Carefully managing the relentlessly growing volume of information carries both risk and opportunity for the enterprise. At EMC, we believe that senior corporate leaders need to be active stewards of their companies’ information and should know as much about their information assets as their CFO knows about their company’s financial assets. Implementing a companywide information governance initiative is one of the most valuable moves corporate leaders can make to create and enforce policies that help ensure information quality, compliance, and protection while increasing its business value.”

“As firms large and small begin to think more strategically about how information is used and conveyed, creating a standard set of policies and procedures for governing information protection, use and distribution inside and outside the firm will be extremely important,” said Debra D’Agostino, deputy director in the Americas, Industry and Management Research, at the Economist Intelligence Unit.

The 2008 EIU research survey includes responses from senior business executives from leading companies headquartered in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia-Pacific and Latin America. Survey results revealed key differences between the 62 percent of respondents that do not have formal information governance programmes and the 38 percent of respondents that do:

-- For firms without a governance strategy, the risks may be significant. Only 51 percent of respondents at companies that do not have a formal information governance strategy rate their firms’ overall ability to protect sensitive data as ‘good’ or ‘very good’ compared with 85 percent for those whose companies have a formal strategy.

-- 40 percent of overall respondents say their firm does not regularly review and revise information backup and retention policies.

-- Only 43 percent of respondents rate their firms’ ability to integrate and share information across departments and necessary third parties as ‘good’ or ‘very good’; 21 percent say that it is poor or very poor.

-- 92 percent of respondents at firms with information governance strategies rate their company’s ability to provide access to critical business information when it is needed as ‘good’ or ‘very good’, compared with only 57 percent of companies that do not have governance in place.

-- 57 percent of respondents admit they do not have a single view of the customer.

-- 81 percent of firms with information governance programmes report that ‘information can be better shared between departments, allowing for better decision-making’.

“Good information governance can help companies solve a fundamental challenge within their organisations - how to balance the costs, risks and value of information assets across the enterprise,” said Chuck Hollis, EMC Global Marketing CTO. “As the EIU research indicates, implementing an information governance programme can result in companies seeing improved operations and cost control, increased visibility of information flows across the enterprise and an overall better organisational preparedness for meeting compliance mandates. The senior leadership at corporations worldwide should make this a key business priority.”