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Enterprise Information Management

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Introduction
Enterprise Information Management (EIM) is a discipline in information technology that focuses
in indentifying solutions for maximum use of information within an enterprise that will support
decision-making processes for the day-to-day running of a business enterprise that require the
availability of knowledge. It attempts to overcome traditional IT-related hindrances to managing
information at an enterprise level. Enterprise information management uses the following
concepts; Enterprise Content Management (ECM), Business Process Management (BPM),
Customer Experience Management (CEM), and Business Intelligence (BI). Enterprise
information management (EIM) integrates discipline for outlining, organizing, merging, sharing
and governing information assets to all organizational and technological boundaries with an aim
to improve business prosects through increased effectiveness and efficiency and thereby
promoting transparency and enabling business insights and processes. Hype Cycles can be an
invaluable tool to help technology and service providers make effective product planning and marketing
decisions. Enterprise information management further explores and focuses in managing
information one step further, in that it approaches information management from an enterprise
perspective. Enterprise information management aims to bring enterprise order, drive, structure,

efficiency, and efficiency and effectiveness to applications, processes, data, meta data and
technology.
The Hype cycle is used by management to help them track the progress of various technologies,
practices and disciplines in enterprise information management. The Hype Cycle for Emerging
Technologies report is an annual Hype Cycle report, that details a cross-industry perspective on
the technologies and trends that business heads and strategists, chief innovation officers, R&D
leaders, entrepreneurs, global market developers and emerging-technology teams should consider
in developing emerging-technology portfolios. Gartner's 2015 Hype Cycle for Emerging
Technologies Identifies the Computing Innovations That Organizations Should Monitor. CIOs,
CDOs , IT leaders, and IT professionals discuss and rationalize of applying the technology and
service investment choices in front of them in guiding them to embark or to expand an EIM
program.

EIM Hype Cycle reflects the state of development, use and acceptance of this technology in
large enterprises across a range of industries. The Hype Cycle show cases the progress that the
average organization has made with the discipline. Its evident that a number of organizations
have made significant progress with MDM and are on the peak of Productivity. However, the
overall level of adoption of EIM is considerably low but its individual component disciplines are
still gaining in popularity and gaining the necessary visibility.
Organizations that have adopted this technology have been able to benefit from the following:
Data Quality

Refers to how fit data is in terms of accuracy and consistency. Information distributed to
customers who maybe inside and outside the organization should be as accurate as possible
to make the right decisions.
Information Management
Involves the acquisition of information from one source to another and thus an
Increased effectiveness of data is very key for business planning and execution
Process Efficiency
Involves set of tasks that are done respectively to produce a product and thus with a
Consolidated data architecture optimized system the time spent will be reduced thus
provide value to a customer or supplier.

Security
By reducing the vulnerability the Organization data that is protected from misuse
Organizational Agility
Increases the ability to rapidly change or adapt in response to changes and meet
dynamic market demands
The goal of the EIM Hype Cycle is not to position all relevant technologies at a detailed level.
Rather, because EIM has not fully developed as a discipline, the Hype Cycle includes several
technology concepts (such as the Information Capabilities Framework) that are fundamental to
EIM support. These concepts can be implemented in various ways, using many technologies that
are reflected in other Hype Cycles.

Enterprise content management

This is a systematic collection and organization of information that is to be used by a designated
audience business executives and or customers. It combines strategies, methods, and tools to
capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver information supporting key organizational
processes through its entire lifecycle. the technology allows the management of an organization
to utilize unstructured information, wherever that information exists.
Top 5 Elements of ECM

Capture electroically all information content into the system.

Managing an organizations content begins with the capture and importing of information into a
secure digital repository.
This can be any kind of document that is created, captured, stored, shared or archived, including:

Invoices from vendors

Resumes from job applicants

Contracts

Correspondence

Research reports

Store information content digiatally

The benefits of enterprise content management go beyond simply keeping track of where
documents are located. A content management system also reduces the time, cost and complexity
associated with managing documents throughout their life cycle, helping ensure compliance with
organizational record retention policies. (Parekh, Joe Zhou, & Robinson)

Retrieve documents, regardless of device or location

Enterprise content management helps in searching for information, enabling employees to

answer information requests from clients, citizens and auditors immediately. More than that, staff
have instant access to the information required to make better decisions about issues impacting
your organizations bottom line.

Automate document driven processes

Automation helps organizations eliminate manual tasksincluding photocopying, hand delivery

and repetitive dragging and droppingto achieve greater results with fewer resources. Some
ECM systems have digital automation features that can:

Automatically route documents to the right people at the right time

Alert staff members when documents require their attention

Recognize errors before any extraneous work can be done

Secure documents and reduce organizational risk

With strengthening compliance restrictions in a wide range of industries, organizations are

increasingly using ECM systems to optimize records management practices and protect against
risk. An enterprise content management system must provide customizable security settings to
allow organizations to protect information from unauthorized access or modification.

Restrict access to folders, documents, fields, annotations and other granular document
properties as needed

Monitor system login and logout, document creation and destruction, password changes
and more

Protect sensitive metadata by controlling information access down to individual folders,

templates and fields

Leading ECM solutions enable line of business departments to manage user access
independentlywhich means sensitive HR information stays within the HR department, while
private financial information stays within the finance department, even if the information is
stored in the same repository. (Gartner,inc, 26 July 2012)
Businesses are compelled to adopt ECM solutions due to various reasons. Some of the factors
include the need to increase efficiency, improving acquisition and control of information, and
ability to manage the overall cost of information management for the enterprise. ECM
applications streamline access to records through keyword and full-text search allowing
employees to get to the information they need directly from their desktops in seconds rather than
searching multiple applications or digging through paper records.

Business intelligence
This is a process that is used for analysis of data and presenting actionable information to help
corporate executives, business managers and other end users make more informed
business decisions. It denotes a set of techniques and tools used in the acquisition and
transformation of raw data into organized and reusable information for business
analysis purposes. BI is a technology that has the capability of handling large volumes of
structured and sometimes unstructured data to useful in mapping, developing and otherwise
create new strategic business opportunities. BI aims at allowing the ease in granular dissection of
these large volumes of data identifying new potential markets and executing an effective strategy
through consuming the insights can provided by the processed data will help businesses with a
competitive market advantage and long-term stability.
Business intelligence can be applied to the following business purposes, in order to drive
business value
1. Measurement program that creates a hierarchy of performance metrics (see also Metrics
Reference Model) and benchmarking that informs business leaders about progress
towards business goals (business process management).
2. Analytics program that builds quantitative processes for a business to arrive at optimal
decisions and to perform business knowledge discovery. Frequently involves: data
mining, process mining, statistical analysis, predictive analytics, predictive

modeling, business process modeling, data lineage, complex event

processing and prescriptive analytics.
3. Reporting/enterprise reporting program that builds infrastructure for strategic reporting
to serve the strategic management of a business, not operational reporting. Frequently
involves data visualization,executive information system and OLAP.
4. Collaboration/collaboration platform program that gets different areas (both inside and
outside the business) to work together through data sharing and electronic data
interchange.
5. Knowledge management program to make the company data-driven through strategies
and practices to identify, create, represent, distribute, and enable adoption of insights and
experiences that are true business knowledge. Knowledge management leads to learning
management and regulatory compliance.
In addition to the above, business intelligence can provide a pro-active approach, such as alert
functionality that immediately notifies the end-user if certain conditions are met. For example, if
some business metric exceeds a pre-defined threshold, the metric will be highlighted in standard
reports, and the business analyst may be alerted via e-mail or another monitoring service. This
end-to-end process requires data governance, which should be handled by the expert

Companies use BI to improve decision making, cut costs and identify new business
opportunities. BI is more than just corporate reporting and more than a set of tools to coax data

out of enterprise systems. CIOs use BI to identify inefficient business processes that are ripe for
re-engineering. (Moss & Atre)
Hardees, Wendys, Ruby Tuesday and T.G.I. Fridays are heavy users of BI software. They use
BI to make strategic decisions, such as what new products to add to their menus, which dishes to
remove and which underperforming stores to close. They also use BI for tactical matters such as
renegotiating contracts with food suppliers and identifying opportunities to improve inefficient
processes. Because restaurant chains are so operations-driven, and because BI is so central to
helping them run their businesses, they are among the elite group of companies across all
industries that are actually getting real value from these systems.
Conclusion
The EIM initiative, appropriate processes, policies and technologies have been created thus
making it possible and easy to collect, disseminate and maintain the integrity of critical data
points across various programs in a way that is measureable, equitable and responsive to all
aspects of the enterprise. In addition, EIM has allowed an organizations to automate and
integrate data through the enterprise, with the main focus of building a source of enterprisedesigned data for distribution and consumption by all users in the business unit. Through the
development and implementation of EIM strategies, organizations are now able to build solutions
to the challenges and problems earlier encountered by these organizations and provide more
efficient, effective, and proactive services to their external and internal information customers.
Establishing and maintaining an EIM initiative will enable an organization to realize enterprise
wide integration and alignment goals that are too often missing from current information
strategies.

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Through creation of cultural awareness and understanding of data management principles

through the various initiatives that are specific to EIM the organization will improve the
understanding of its business processes, organizational roles, data management and data
ownership throughout the enterprise. This in-turn will promote the collaboration and cooperation
that is needed and will help to come up with a single enterprise view of an organizations
products and services.
Organizations accrue many benefits from adopting an Enterprise Information Management
initiative. These benefits allow the organizations in Improvements in data quality, information
management, process efficiency, security, and organizational agility are just a few of the vast
array of benefits that many organizations enjoy with this technology.

References
EMC Corporation. (2008). Enterprise Information management:Information
visualization for unified business view.
Gartner,inc. (26 July 2012). Hype Cycle for Enterprise Information.
Moss, L. T., & Atre, S. Business Intelligence Road Map. Boston: Adisson- Wesley.
Parekh, K., Joe Zhou, K. M., & Robinson, G. Utility Enterprise Information System.
Dallas.
Laugero, G. and A. Globe (2002) Enterprise content services: Connecting
information and profitability. Boston: Addison-Wesley.
Saxena, A. (2008) Enterprise content management: A practical guide to successfully
implementing an ECM Solution. Fort Lauderdale: J. Ross Publishing
Shegda, K. M. and R.M. Gilbert (2009) Key issues for enterprise content
management initiatives in 2009 Gartner Inc. Research Publication, 23 March.

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