Manufacturers face fines from poor information tracking

That’s among key findings of a cross-industry customer survey by IBM and Gavilan Research, which suggests that risk mitigation and data governance are fast becoming key drivers in new projects – with the emphasis on metadata to better track information. It also finds that respondents are increasingly focused on organising, reusing and sharing corporate knowledge and keeping up with increasing pressures to supply better information to drive their businesses and remain competitive. Stu Carty, president and founder of Gavilan, says that, due to growing information management challenges – in particular information overload and regulatory requirements – companies are increasingly prioritising getting a grip on how data is accessed or altered, and the accuracy and completeness of information. “Unfortunately, most companies haven’t solved the problem of effectively managing corporate metadata, as evidenced by the survey results,” says Carty. “One of the key challenges is coordinating and synchronising information across disparate tools and information sources, leading to better understanding of where information resides and how it is used.” He warns that the growing significance of this problem is down to increasing operational complexities and the risks of loss of customer revenue and potential fines from non-compliance. Which seems to strike a chord: 67% of respondents said that data governance and data stewardship issues are among the top three metadata-related issues they were struggling with, although interestingly, 45% do not yet have a data governance council or data governance projects underway. Also, 80% of respondents said they are struggling with other information-related issues, such as documenting business metadata, while 64% are documenting metadata for data warehouses, data marts and analytical applications. All good news for IBM, which, no doubt, will be touting its InfoSphere portfolio, aimed at accelerating the delivery of trusted information throughout an organisation. The survey was conducted among some 300 data management professionals from Global 5,000 companies mainly in the US and Canada.