http://www.beyeresearch.com/study/14243

Executive Summary of Key Findings

This report presents the results of an online survey on information governance (IG) developed and sponsored by IBM. The goal is to understand how the marketplace views IG in several major areas in the context of IBM’s definition of IG: Information governance is a holistic approach to managing and leveraging information for business benefits and encompasses information quality, information protection and information life cycle management. IBM positions information quality, protection and life cycle management as the three core management disciplines within its IG infrastructure. They also serve as entry points for implementing an IG program.

More than 400 BeyeNetwork subscribers took the survey. A majority are from North America, primarily the U.S. Company size in annual revenue is relatively evenly split among categories, enabling the survey results to capture the perspectives of all size companies, from small (less than $10 million) to very large (more than $10 billion). 10% of respondents identified job titles in top management (CEO, COO, President, etc.); adding CIO, CTO, or IT Director positions brings senior management to 16%.

Two-thirds of respondents are already implementing or plan to implement an IG program within the next 18 months. Larger companies are more likely to be involved in IG, but even among the smallest companies, half are involved or planning to be. In line with critical business concerns, almost half of respondents include data quality in the scope of their IG efforts and this is the area where they are most likely to invest money this year and next.

Over 40% also indicated that their IG scope is enterprise wide and the number of organizations spending money on enterprise-wide IG projects will grow by almost 50% in 2011 over 2010. Thirty-eight percent (38%) of respondents have already established IG leadership roles within their organizations.

Seventy percent (70%) of respondents see IG growing in importance over the next three to five years in order to achieve business success. Only 1% of respondents see IG becoming less important in this time frame. This growing importance is supported by the business problems respondents have experienced and the high value they place on the ability of their IG efforts to solve these problems.

Importance of information governance will grow over the next 3 to 5 years

Respondents are clear on the significant business value of IG from the perspective of both business and IT executives, especially in the ability to increase confidence in information for decision making and improve data quality. These are the two top business concerns for respondents as well as the top two that respondents felt could be better addressed with a comprehensive IG program. Almost 70% of survey organizations have experienced data quality issues over the past three years. High quality data is a critical foundation for achieving goals such as increased revenue opportunities through better customer profiling.

Other business values supported by IG include the ability to better manage business risk and ensure compliance through effective security, auditing and retention of data. 46% of respondents have experienced audit failure over the past three years and 64% have experienced data retention and archiving issues.

Respondents are specific about the need for IG as the foundation for successful implementation of a wide variety of information-related projects, including business intelligence, master data management (MDM), analytics and data warehousing. Almost half of respondents view IG and MDM as symbiotic.

The biggest barrier to implementation is the fact that IG has a lower priority than other projects. Inability to communicate the value of the effort, cost and complexity are also major barriers for more than 30% of respondents.

Although getting an IG effort underway can be daunting, the cost of not doing so is high. The key is to start small in the area of most critical need: information quality, information protection or information life cycle management. IG is clearly a way to gain competitive advantage and reap significant long-term benefits.