Of course the right answer is both, but it is important that the vaue of client information is protected by managing the risks of improper information management.
Over the course of the past few months there has been increasing attention gathering around the subject of information governance, particularly since people have see the disastrous effects on share prices at compaines like Sony when a catastropnic security breach occurs.
Traditionally the business case for investing in enterprise information management stewardship functions has been a tough sell to anyone outside IT departments; the risks seemed remote and the process of controlling information seemed arcane. With increased attention comes better literacy and awareness about this important aspect of possessing data. Recent events have demonstrated just how important managing information properly is ... what should be one of your strategic assets can quickly and unforgivingly inflict catastrophic damage to your brand, share price and your business franchise in total.
One of the key things to realize is that we are not just talking about information you might have in a data mart or data warehouse containing client data. It extends much further than that ... documents, emails, paper records, telephne recordings, website history - all of these forms of unstructured data exist in your bank and they may contain 80% or more of the specific client information that needs to be protected from hackers, competitors and even espionage efforts. The scope is vast and growing exponentially, yet few are yet aware of the extent of the business and operational risk exposure maintaining client information entails.
There is an upside to this story, and it is well worth considering before labelling information management as a risk containment exercise. One part of the upside lies in the value of information as an asset to be mined - well understood by marketing departments - to increase revenue through more relevant, timely and selective communications which reduce attrition and increase acquisition per dollar of spend. Similarly high quality, trusted and controlled information is critical to support operational decision making and deploymnet of the increasingly practical analytical optimization of business processes via statistical process control and measurement - what we called Operations Research back when I was at University.
The other lesser known opportunity lies in the hard dollar savings that can be realized from getting rid of information that should not be retained. Eliminating redundancy and complying with disposition regulations can be a big money saver, as it reduces not only hardware and processing costs but reduces all of the other data management functions such as backup and retention processes as well. This aspect alone can make Governance a self-funding investment for your bank.
Information about your clients can be an asset or a liability. Good management practices can reduce cost and increase effectiveness of management decision making. Poor management leaves you exposed to catastrophic risks that could empty some C-level offices. The time to acti is now, the choice is yours.
If you would like to do a self-assessment of the state of information governance in your organization I recommend you join the global Information Governance Community which is available at no cost (IBM sponsors it).
- Dave
