IT Management – Overcoming Data Diversity

A Knowledge Management Solution

As many organizations are now learning in the data ware housing environment, data is only as good as its usefulness in the business world. The ability to move out of an applications mentality and into an opportunity for true business analysis is a key strategy in focusing on the future development of data warehousing.

Most data applications continue to run on mainframe environments across platforms, architectures and technologies. This conglomeration of hardware and software can create a standardization problem due to some platform inconsistency. Additionally, the data that is being collected and extracted may not meet the needs of multiple users. For the typical company, information is housed in many different locations— web servers, end-user desktops, paper files and the Internet. This type of diversity does not allow users to access and deploy information in an efficient and cost effective manner.

With the onslaught of the new millennium, data warehousing and more specifically business intelligence systems are in the mainstream with new practices, technologies and architectures designed to meet today’s business challenges. The need to access and manage complex information is the driving force behind business intelligence systems and knowledge management. A dynamic knowledge management system coupled with a business intelligence solution provides employees with accelerated access to data regardless of location.

The true value of knowledge management is the ability it provides to users to influence and enable fundamental changes in the business organization. There is no pat recipe for “slicing and dicing” data. The effective use of knowledge management requires a practical combination of technology and business acumen customized to meet the needs of individual organizations.

To understand the complexity of implementing a knowledge management solution for the business problems of today, we need to formulate a definition for this new industry buzzword. “Knowledge Management caters to critical issues of organizational adaptation, survival and competence in the face of increasingly discontinuous environment change. Essentially, it embodies organizational processes that seek a synergistic combination of data and information processing capacity of information technologies, and the creative and innovative capacity of human beings.” Industry experts would tend to agree that the ultimate purpose of improving key IT and business processes within an organization is to help people throughout an organization to use information more effectively.

How Businesses Leverage Their Information

Identifying key business objectives and understanding business strategy will help define an organization’s global technology needs. Software and hardware vendors can provide a solution that can consolidate, manage and analyze data across the network and provide useable and intelligent information that can be distributed to various user groups.

With the endless stream of choices, organizations often elect to capitalize on the expertise of strategic consulting firms to partner with them in making these critical decisions. Technology & Business Integrators, Inc. (TBI), a leading strategic consulting firm with over 48 years of experience has assisted many organizations in their quest to assess their needs and identify the appropriate service providers for implementing a business intelligence solution.

Knowledge management promises to revolutionize how business organizations leverage their information to influence business activities which represents a challenging and continuously evolving industry trend that can yield significant benefits in overcoming the problem of data diversity.

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