This reinforces a notion implicit in many other ideas addressed during this course, namely, the critical importance of IS personnel and senior managers working together to identify opportunities and to agree on how best to allocate scarce IS resources. Joint consideration of an organisations data structures will almost certainly result in some resources being devoted to developing and implementing a data architecture. However, the pace of implementation will be determined by broader business priorities. Back to Index Scope of managed data Not all data can be managed using formal information resource management methods. This is illustrated in Fig 9.2 of Ward et al and is discussed in the associated text.
Many organisations have a large amount of valuable data within their computer systems.
Frequently they are unable to obtain full value from that data because the data is poorly structured. However, it is often possible to obtain significant additional value from the data contained in existing systems without replacing the systems. Projects that realise material incremental value from existing data stores can often be very attractive and can often help an organisation improve the quality of its data structures in a manner that is both evolutionary and closely correlated with business needs. Making the most of existing systems is not a major explicit topic at boardroom level. However, it is almost always highly desirable to maximise the value generated by current systems.