Today’s businesses need information. Lots of information. Yet, many have difficulties managing their data and transforming it into the information they require. The goal of creating suitable reports, when they’re needed, with no errors and nothing missing is elusive.
In response, millions of dollars are being spent on data governance, data management, data integration and other initiatives but in many cases that’s just added to the problem since its unclear who is supposed to do what and how it all fits together.
But it doesn’t have to be.
Think of a car… It’s made of thousands of parts from multiple suppliers located all over the world and yet, this complexity is managed so that more than 17 million vehicles were made in the US in 2016 alone. Using careful product design, efficient manufacturing production lines and robust quality control processes, over 32 cars per minute come out of their factories that are embraced by the customers who buy them. This includes making multiple models with custom configurations that are changed annually to meet evolving performance and aesthetic demands.
Product manufacturers use time-proven methods and techniques to turn numerous parts and sub-assemblies into the high quality physical products we all purchase and use regularly. Isn’t a report just a ‘product’? Isn’t it assembled from data ‘parts’ and information ‘sub-assemblies’? Shouldn’t it be possible to create standard, efficient processes to do this? We think so.
By employing common manufacturing techniques the data management and reporting process can improve from ad-hoc and uncontrolled to planned and precise. And since these proven approaches aren’t dependent on using a particular technology or software solution, this can be applied to anyone. Whatever your infrastructure you can improve your results by organizing and managing the inputs, products and activities and produce high quality information in trustworthy reports.
These are what we call Information Factories.
like product manufacturers delivering to their customers, Information Factories address their organization’s reporting needs through a disciplined production process that is planned, documented, verified and constantly measured.