Organisations today have a growing number of systems to collect data. These include legacy systems, ERP and non-ERP transactional systems, e-commerce applications, as well as external systems from suppliers, customers, and partners. The data in these systems keeps growing. For companies to reap a return on their information assets, they must compare information from one system to another. The ability to bring together a company’s data assets provides the necessary integration for effective business intelligence.

Organisations face a variety of challenges when it comes to delivering high-value BI systems to reporting consumers: eliminating overhead on operational systems caused by reporting and analysis needs, consolidating data from disparate data sources, accessing consistent information across the enterprise, preserving data history, and presenting data in an understandable structure to business users. Most organisations manage information in separate silos: system-by-system or department-by-department. The result is a lack of consistency, transparency and quality of information across the organisation.

Information Management is about developing a coordinated strategy and executing a plan that reduces the cost, complexity and integration of shared information that will in turn to improve operational efficiency, promote transparency and enable business insight.