Asset Centricity: Bridging the Gap Between the Business and IT
Posted by
Matthew Childress, Senior Vice President
on
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
For most organizations, aligning their IT systems with the core business is a goal that always seems to be just out of reach. I speak with CIOs and IT directors every day who are on this common, age-old quest. Most ask me the same two questions: What is the best way to align IT with business? And where should we start?
While there are no hard and fast answers, many of my clients are finding that an asset-centric approach to information management can help rationalize their systems environment.
Asset centricity is a remarkably simple concept. The core idea is to organize information around the business' core asset. For example, for an O&G company, it is the well. For a drilling company, it is the rig. For a logistics company, it is the truck or the plane. In essence, the company's core asset is that definable entity around which all business processes revolve.
The asset-centric approach provides a logical and sustainable means to organize and present information around a core asset. I tell my clients if they can define their core asset - the entity that is the essence of their business - they have the answer to "What is the best way to align IT with business?" That is, build your information architecture around your core asset. And that in a nutshell is what the 360° Solution Framework is all about.
Now that you have defined your core asset, where do you start? The only reasonable route toward realizing the ideal of building capabilities around an asset is through incremental phases, usually at the business process level. I tell my clients to start with a core process and adapt an asset-centric framework that gathers asset-related data and then pushes that data out to information consumers involved in the process. The 360° Catalyst offering provides a low-risk/high-reward method of proving the value of the asset-centric approach in any company.
As a basis for this framework, here are a few key tenets to ensure that the incremental approach pays long-term dividends.
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Plan for the asset's life span. In order to architect solutions around a defined asset, the asset's entire life cycle should be considered. This provides a historical perspective through which the chronology of the asset can be examined to review, refine, and rethink its place in the portfolio.
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Define a core data model able to handle multiple data types. Transaction data points are created every day associated with the asset and stored in various databases. This collection of data needs to be collected into structures enabling reporting and analysis about the asset. Further, unstructured data, such as the documents and artifacts related to the asset, provides another data dimension.
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Extend and enhance data from line-of-business systems. Generally speaking all of the systems currently in place to support the business have a particular role to play in the asset life cycle. These systems are typically built to collect and organize data about a particular department's activities. Combining the data across systems allows user queries to be answered through a view of information that cannot usually be achieved easily.
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Simplify the user experience. Combining data across the different pockets of activity around the asset is a significant undertaking. However, the asset-centric approach lacks impact without a common manner for users to take advantage of this capability. This can be accomplished in a modular fashion with multiple windows available in a common portal.
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Use the magnetic effect of business process. The more data and efficiency related to typical business processes can be defined, the more likely an asset-centric approach can be modeled in application design. If the overall business process - steps, dependencies, escalations, notifications - can be abstracted, applications can be modeled in a way that allows more data to be collected and disseminated to the right folks the first time.
The importance of business-process modeling in building a flexible asset-centric architecture cannot be overstated. Combining asset centricity with process reengineering reflects a mature approach that provides IT with more depth in the understanding of the business - and in effectively bridging the gap between IT and the business.