Between the creation of a strategy and a pipeline of projects is a chasm where opportunities go to die.
When we talk to managers they tell us that they have a strategy – they know their direction of travel.
They also know what needs to be done operationally. There is a pipeline of projects sat in various stages of approval.
Projects get stuck because things that makes sense to engineering don’t make sense to finance. Approval processes that meet risk requirements make it impossible to select a fully compliant solution. Procurement looks for innovation, but legal focuses on the risks and liabilities.
So decision makers push back – they ask for more data.
But what they really need is information, not data.
Data is the raw material – it needs to be collected, cleaned, processed and readied.
But for it to make sense – for it to turn into information – managers need to have the time and headspace to understand the data and figure out what it means for the organisation.
A good information system does two things: it makes it easy and quick to collect quality data; and it makes it easy for you to put what you’ve collected on the table and make sense of it.
Your data is like a pile of bricks.
Your information system is the bridge you build to go from strategy to operational delivery.
Handcrafted insight 