Sustainable IT Architecture
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What is valorization of Information Systems?
To guarantee the IS to be fully gauged, three types of value must be distinguished.
Related link: Assess your IS (Using the IS Rating Tool to measure the Intrinsic Value of your IS Assets)
To guarantee the IS to be fully gauged, three types of value must be distinguished.
Related link: Assess your IS (Using the IS Rating Tool to measure the Intrinsic Value of your IS Assets)
Use Value of
Information Systems
The Use Value of IS deals with an assessment of company’s working procedures used by IS stakeholders to communicate, build, maintain and run their Information Systems. When Use Value is studied, specialists in charge of the assessment admit that the IS value is related mainly to its mode of use not to its intrinsic value. This is the historic field of IS governance, projects management, procedures modeling applied to Enterprise Architecture. In this domain, companies can use well-known approaches such as ISO900x, CobiT, CMMI, PRINCE2, TOGAF, etc.
Business Value of
Information Systems
Regardless of working procedures, the Business Value of IS tackles the Information Systems quality to align them with business strategy and operational requirements. One significant aspect is the responsiveness, in other words the IS ability to react quickly to change. The Business Value also encompasses the computation of market values, including financial measurement of the IS Assets as required by financial regulations such as IAS-IFRS.
For example, a Customer database has a financial value that an Account specialist is able to evaluate from a marketing and sales point of view. But this Customer database has also a value depending on its own IS quality: Are data easily available to Business Users? Are data models up to date and understandable by business users? Are user permissions well-managed? Are business rules attached to data well-documented and versioned? Are data duplicated with quality concerns? Etc. The ability level to adapt and align IS with business requirements changing rapidly depends also on this assessment. This is what we call the IS Intrinsic Value.
Therefore, to succeed in assessing the true IS Business Value, specialists in charge of this work need a lot of inputs regarding the quality of Data, Rules and Processes managed through the IS. Unfortunately, there is a lack of reliable indicators in this field. More information describing Intrinsic Values of these assets are needed, not only the quality of companies’ working procedures available to manage them.
Here is another example to well understand the concern IS stakeholders are facing with: the Business Value of a risk management system could be very high (good alignment with business requirements) whereas a large part of its data is managed through spreadsheets without real Data Governance (version, security, archiving, etc.). A good IS Business Value could hide a further problem related to the loss of data quality. Then, it is important for companies to identify and quantify the loss of data, rules and processes quality. To achieve this goal, companies have to use rating tools to assess the intrinsic value of IS Assets based on their Data, Rules and Processes.
For example, a Customer database has a financial value that an Account specialist is able to evaluate from a marketing and sales point of view. But this Customer database has also a value depending on its own IS quality: Are data easily available to Business Users? Are data models up to date and understandable by business users? Are user permissions well-managed? Are business rules attached to data well-documented and versioned? Are data duplicated with quality concerns? Etc. The ability level to adapt and align IS with business requirements changing rapidly depends also on this assessment. This is what we call the IS Intrinsic Value.
Therefore, to succeed in assessing the true IS Business Value, specialists in charge of this work need a lot of inputs regarding the quality of Data, Rules and Processes managed through the IS. Unfortunately, there is a lack of reliable indicators in this field. More information describing Intrinsic Values of these assets are needed, not only the quality of companies’ working procedures available to manage them.
Here is another example to well understand the concern IS stakeholders are facing with: the Business Value of a risk management system could be very high (good alignment with business requirements) whereas a large part of its data is managed through spreadsheets without real Data Governance (version, security, archiving, etc.). A good IS Business Value could hide a further problem related to the loss of data quality. Then, it is important for companies to identify and quantify the loss of data, rules and processes quality. To achieve this goal, companies have to use rating tools to assess the intrinsic value of IS Assets based on their Data, Rules and Processes.
Intrinsic Value of
Information Systems
Intrinsic Value is the actual value of IS Assets regardless of its Use Value and its Business Value. In other words, when a rating is established to measure the Intrinsic Value, then the quality of working procedures, modeling procedures and financial considerations are ignored.
Every IS Asset based on Data, Rules and Processes is gauged through three performance facets: Mastering KNOWLEDGE, Mastering GOVERNANCE FEATURES, Mastering IT. With help from this set of performance levels applied to Data, Rules and Processes, it becomes easier and more reliable to assess IS Business Values and to check how the working procedures are suitable to support a better rating of Data, Rules and Processes.
Note: The Governance features facet is focus on a list of functions required to well-manage Data, Rules and Processes such as Version management, Authoring, Traceability, etc. This is not the quality of processes applied to conduct changes and relationships between Executives, Business Users and IT department.
The IS Rating Tool is used to tackle the IS Intrinsic Value by providing a set of measures applied to Data, Rules and Processes. The way of managing these IS Assets determines the performance levels and corresponds to a consolidated rate applied to the IS scope which is evaluated, not the whole scale of the IS mandatory, but a Business Unit, a Functional Domain, a Subsidiary, a software package, etc.
The IS Intrinsic Value is higher when IS Assets are not hard-coded within opaque software only. In other words, the more Data, Rules and Processes are managed through business repositories the more the rating goes up. These business repositories are embodied through MDM, BRMS and BPM respectively, what we call the Agility Chain Management System (ACMS).
Every IS Asset based on Data, Rules and Processes is gauged through three performance facets: Mastering KNOWLEDGE, Mastering GOVERNANCE FEATURES, Mastering IT. With help from this set of performance levels applied to Data, Rules and Processes, it becomes easier and more reliable to assess IS Business Values and to check how the working procedures are suitable to support a better rating of Data, Rules and Processes.
Note: The Governance features facet is focus on a list of functions required to well-manage Data, Rules and Processes such as Version management, Authoring, Traceability, etc. This is not the quality of processes applied to conduct changes and relationships between Executives, Business Users and IT department.
The IS Rating Tool is used to tackle the IS Intrinsic Value by providing a set of measures applied to Data, Rules and Processes. The way of managing these IS Assets determines the performance levels and corresponds to a consolidated rate applied to the IS scope which is evaluated, not the whole scale of the IS mandatory, but a Business Unit, a Functional Domain, a Subsidiary, a software package, etc.
The IS Intrinsic Value is higher when IS Assets are not hard-coded within opaque software only. In other words, the more Data, Rules and Processes are managed through business repositories the more the rating goes up. These business repositories are embodied through MDM, BRMS and BPM respectively, what we call the Agility Chain Management System (ACMS).