From MIKE2 Methodology
Information Maturity (IM) QuickScan is the tool used to assess current and desired Information Maturity levels within an organisation. The IM QuickScan survey instrument is broad in scope and is intended to assess enterprise capabilities as opposed to focusing on a single subject area. The results of the survey are conducting during Phase 1 of the MIKE2.0 Methodology during the Organisational QuickScan for Information Development Activity.
The excel-based version of IM QuickScan described in the page can be found in the Intraspect file repository (currently only available to internal BearingPoint users ). A web-based version of IM QuickScan is also available through BearingPoint's Web-Based Assessment Framework. Note that the web-based version of IM QuickScan is more limited in its functionality than the excel-based version, these differences are listed below.
Information Maturity Assessment Areas in IM QuickScan
The IM QuickScan survey is based on a series of Capability Statements. Capability Statements represent either:
- Business Capabilities that an organization wants to achieve or improve; or
- Data Management Capabilities which are the enablers of Business Capabilities.
Each survey interviewee is asked to rate CSs in terms of current and target capability level. We started with 175 candidate CSs that exist in the MIKE2 Methodology and reduce or extend this list as needed. Capability Statements are mapped to Information Development Competencies (IDC). IDCs represent the specific competencies that must be undertaken to improve information management maturity.
Baseline Capability Statements
IM QuickScan contains approximately 175 Capability Statements that are used to gain insight into the corporation’s IMM maturity level. Capability Statements are organized into Data Management Areas, which are used to group questions regarding a particular area. Questions are organized into groups to ensure that the assessment covers the full breadth of information maturity and to provide structure to the implementation roadmap. The following Data Management Areas are included:
IM QuickScan Data Management Areas
| Data Subject Area | Data Quality Strategy | Benchmarking
|
| Executive Sponsorship | Data Standardisation | Data Capture
|
| Data Ownership | Data Stewardship | Single View of Customer
|
| Data Integration (ETL & EAI) | B2B Data Integration | Communication Plan
|
| Dashboard (Tracking / Trending) | Profiling / Measurement | Audits
|
| Data Quality Metrics | Service Level Agreements | Common Data Model
|
| Common Message Model | Common Data Services | Security
|
| Privacy | Metadata Management | Data Collection Standards
|
| Issue Identification | Root Cause Analysis | Cleansing
|
| Linking (Householding) | Enrichment | Platform Standardisation
|
| Data Validation | Data Analysis |
|
|
For each Data Management Area, a series of Capability Statements are listed in the spreadsheet. The statements include both true business capabilities (e.g. can the business recognize churn events at the point of occurrence) and data management capabilities (e.g. does the business conduct periodic data profiling). Both types of statements are used to gain a broad and deep understanding of the information management practices in place and how they impact business performance.
Each Capability Statement has a set of attributes associated with it in the IM QuickScan spreadsheet. The attributes are defined in the table below. Each attribute is indicated as either user specified or default. User specified attributes do not have a default value and are filled in as part of the survey process for a client. Default attributes have values set in the base IM QuickScan spreadsheet. These may or may not apply to a particular client. All default values that have been populated in IM QuickScan should be reviewed by the project team in the context of each client and either retained or modified accordingly.
Even though the IM QuickScan spreadsheet has numerous attributes associated with each Capability Statement, only a small subset of these attributes will be given to clients as part of the survey process. These attributes are indicated in the table as well. The remaining attributes are to be used by the project team only as part of the survey result analysis. These attributes are used to help identify priority areas to address, are used to develop the roadmap, and are used to create the business case. The usage of these attributes is described further in the appropriate section below.
Information Collected through IM QuickScan
- Data Management Area: Indicates the data management area that the Capability Statement applies to. IMM level is provided for each data management area, not for each individual question.
- Capability Statement: The survey statement that is given to clients.
- Framework: For each question, Framework is set to one of the following values:
- Policy
- Practice (Process)
- People / Organization
- Technology
- Measurement
- Compliance
- Identifying which one of these Framework areas primarily relates to the Capability Statement provides insight into the strengths and weaknesses of the organization and is used to aid analysis. For example, the survey results may identify that the client has good technology but lacks the policies to enforce proper usage.
Information Maturity QuickScan
- Current Average Rating: This attribute is used to indicate the current maturity level in the organization for this capability statement. Survey participants enter a number between 1 and 5. The participant entries are averaged to indicate current maturity level.
- Target Average Rating: This attribute is used to indicate the target maturity level in the organization for this capability statement. Survey participants enter a number between 1 and 5. The participant entries are averaged to indicate target maturity level. The higher the average, the more important this capability is to the organization.
- Survey Notes: This attribute captures any notes provided by survey participants as part of the survey process.
- Implementation Difficulty: This attributes indicates the degree of difficulty to implement this capability. It can be set to High, Medium, or Low.
- Impacted Process Area: This attribute is used to indicate which process area is impacted by this capability. This will vary considerably by client so no defaults are provided. It can include areas such as Marketing, Report Analysis, and Product Offering. Up to 3 process areas can be provided for each benefit area.
- Benefit Type: This attribute indicates the type of benefit that will be used in business case development. It includes a pull-down menu of options. Benefit type includes things like Resource Optimization and Cost Control. It indicates the type of revenue upside or cost savings that this capability impacts. Up to 3 benefit types can be provided.
- Is Benefit Quantifiable?:Indicates whether this capability drives a quantifiable benefit or not. If not, it may still have relevance in providing a qualitative improvement.
Web-Based Version of IM QuickScan
The web-based version of IM QuickScan available through BearingPoint's Web-Based Assessment Framework provides a "direct entry assessment" (no login is required) and allows users to do a "Quick QuickScan" without a formal project engagement.
Differences with the Web-Based Version of IM QuickScan
The web-based version of IM QuickScan that is available through BearingPoint's Assessment Toolkit.
There are 5 areas where the web-based is limited in functionality compared with the excel-based model:
- Only captures current-state information, not future-state
- Does not allow users to assign importance weightings to each capability statement
- Does not allow users to state whether benefits can be quantified
- Does not allow users to assign quantification of implementation difficulty
- Does not allow users to capture freehand comments
In addition, the current model available through IM QuickScan is open and does not require registration. This provides an upside from a user management perspective but means that it is not possible to compare and aggregate multiple reports.
Users can list the detailed answers to each question when generating the report.
The long-term plan for the web-based version of IM QuickScan is to address these issues and provide the full set of functionality available in the excel-based mode and to have all assessment frameworks in a Open Source Assessment Framework.
Scoring Model for Web-Based Model
The scoring model for the web-based version of IM QuickScan that is available through MIKE2.0 works as follows:
- Scoring is based on a 100-point optimal score system
- Each question is answered on a 1 – 5 basis
- All questions are weighted evenly in terms of importance to the overall scoring model, but scoring done at an overall dimension level
- Each dimension is weighted evenly in producing the overall score. Each dimension is worth a max score of 16.67 points as there are 6 dimensions. For example:
- A user that scores all “5”s for all questions in practice, people/organisation, policy, compliance, measurement, technology will receive a score of 100
- A user that scores all “2”s for all questions in practice, people/organisation, policy, compliance, measurement, technology will receive a score of 40
- A user that scores all “2”s for all questions in practice and all “5”s for all questions in people/organisation, policy, compliance, measurement, technology will receive a score of 90
- A user that scores all “2”s for all questions in measurement and all “5”s for all questions in practice, people/organisation, policy, compliance, technology will receive a score of 90
- A user that scores an average of 1 for practice, an average of 1 for people/organisation, an average of 3 for compliance, an average of 5 for policy, an average of 5 for technology and average of 5 for measurement will receive a score of 66.8
Users that have login access to the web-based tool (currently only available through a BearingPoint project) can customize any of these parameters.
Written Content Available in the Web-Based Model
Written content in IM QuickScan Assessment Reports helps to explain each of the dimensions measured and that output results. For the instance of IM QuickScan that is available through a direct assessment (no login to the tool), written content that is part of the automatically generated assessment is configured statically within the tool and is the same for every assessment.
An example of the content produced by the web-based assessment report is available
here.
Administering the IM QuickScan Survey
IM QuickScan surveys should be provided to executives, business personnel, knowledge workers, and IT data architects and managers. To keep the survey manageable, a limit should be set on the number of survey participants, however, care should be taken to get enough input to make the results worthwhile (15 to 20 is a good range).
The baseline IM QuickScan spreadsheet includes approximately 175 Capability Statements spanning 32 different Data Management Areas. The full set of statements will not apply to all organizations. In addition, based on any preparatory analysis that the project team conducts with a client, other Capability Statements will likely be identified. Therefore, the relevant Capability Statements should be selected for the survey and modified as required, and additional statements can be added as well. Whether a Capability Statement exists, is modified, or is new, each of the attributes for the statement should be examined and filled in or modified as necessary. The set of Capability Statement’s should be reviewed with the client’s project management team prior to distribution.
Even though over 15 attributes are specified in the QuickScan spreadsheet for each Capability Statement, only 4 attributes are included on the survey that is distributed to clients. The remaining attributes are used for analysis. The following attributes are included on the actual survey:
- Capability Statement
- Current Average Rating
- Target Average Rating
- Survey Notes
The reason to keep the survey small and simple is to maximize participation and to keep the results analysis manageable. Once the baseline set of statements has been finalized in the spreadsheet, these 4 attributes should be pasted into a worksheet that will be distributed to clients. You should ensure that the statements are organised by Data Management Area in the survey sheet, to provide some degree of context to survey participants. The Current and Target Average Rating entries must be restricted to be whole numbers between 1 and 5. Because a Target Average Rating is included in the survey, the survey should indicate the time horizon for which the target applies (e.g. the target capability level to achieve in 18 months).
At a minimum, each survey should be initiated by an in-person meeting with survey participants. The purpose of the meeting is to describe the survey process and to answer any questions that the participants have. Each survey can be administered either in-person or independently. The project team should decide which approach is best based for their client. If given independently, a single point of contact should be provided to clarify any questions. Whether the survey is conducted in person or independently, all completed surveys must be captured electronically. The participant survey worksheets should be included in a common workbook so that the results can be tallied and analysis can begin.
Analysing Results from IM QuickScan
Once the survey is completed, enter the survey results into the IM QuickScan spreadsheet. For each question, average the participant responses to calculate the Current Average Rating and Target Average Rating fields. The spreadsheet will automatically tally the Current Average Rating and Target Average Rating for each Data Management Area. In addition, aggregate current and target ratings can be produced for each Framework area.
Once the results have been tallied, the following scatter groups should be created. These are not currently automated in the IM QuickScan spreadsheet so need to be created. These are straightforward to create in Excel. The following graphs should be produced:
- Data Management Areas : Produce a graph that indicates the Current Average Rating and Target Average Rating for each Data Management Area. This will indicate the areas that are highest priority to address.
- Framework Areas : Produce a graph that indicates the Current Average Rating and Target Average Rating for each Framework area. Framework analysis can be provided overall for each framework area as well as for each individual Data Management Area.
- Impacted Process Area : As long as the Impacted Process Areas have been analysed and are consistently indicated in the spreadsheet for the client’s business, it would be very useful to plot the current vs. target gap for each process area as well.
Data Management Areas
The Data Management Areas graph indicates which areas are currently being accomplished adequately and which areas need to be improved. The areas being accomplished adequately are those for which current and target level are aligned. In the scatter graph, these areas will be on or near the diagonal line that extends from the lower left axis to the upper right axis (indicated as the Efficient Frontier on the following figure). This indicates that there is little gap between current capability and target capability. These capabilities should not be the focus of improvement, nor should they be de-emphasized
Those areas that are not important but significant effort is being expended are in the upper right; these are candidates for de-emphasis. Those Data Management Areas contained in the lower right quadrant are the areas that should receive strategic priority focus.
If there are a lot of areas in the lower right quadrant, this may be more work to address than the organization is able to take on. One strategy, therefore, is to classify those areas in the lower right quadrant into multiple buckets. For example, the first phase of an improvement roadmap would addresses anything that has an importance level of 4 or higher and a capability level of 2 or lower. The next phase would then branch out to include the next level of gap, etc.
Framework Areas
The Framework Areas graph provides another level of capability analysis. For each framework area of Policy, Practice, People / Organization, Technology, Measurement, and Compliance, this graph indicates the gap between Current and Target capability. This graph should be produced for these areas across all capability results, and it may be useful for analysis at an individual Data Management Area, particularly for the larger areas.
This analysis is useful to provide insight into the analysis and to help an organization understand their perceived strengths and weaknesses. For example, it may indicate that the organization is very strong in terms of technology but the data management processes are poor. Therefore, the roadmap emphasis should be on addressing process improvement.
Impacted Process Areas
The Impacted Process Area graph, if produced, will provide insight into those process areas that are impacted most by the gap between current and target capabilities. It may indicate that ordering and billing are working fine but customer service is inadequate. These views of survey results are useful both to provide insights to the project team and in presenting results to the client. These graphs provide aggregate results of the survey feedback based on various views on the results. The individual Capability Statements should also be analyzed to gain insight in the client’s situation. One useful strategy is to list the top 10 capability statements, ranked as follows:
- Greatest importance
- Greatest current capability
- Largest gap
- Lowest current capability
These graphs and views on the survey results are meant to inspire insight into the data results. However, it will be up to the project team to draw conclusions from the analysis. The recommended next step in the analysis is to develop Core Themes. Core Themes represent a small number of improvement topics that the organization should build their improvement strategy around. Each Core Theme will likely embody multiple Data Management Areas. The Core Themes provide a simplification mechanism that makes the improvement strategy easier to grasp. So instead of trying to keep track of 10-15 Data Management Areas, the improvement roadmap can be thought of as a handful of Core Themes. Core Themes therefore consist of one or more Data Management Areas, which in turn consist of one or more Business Capabilities.
Developing Core Themes
Based on our experience developing these Information Developing Blueprinting, some Core Themes have emerged that should be considered. Namely:
- The Right Data: this indicates the methods, deliverables, and processes to represent data that is stored or data at rest;
- At The Right Time: this indicates the methods, deliverables, and processes to represent how information is exchanged or data in motion;
- To The Right Place: this represents how data is used throughout the business across various applications.
These are reference Core Themes only. It may be appropriate in some businesses to use Core Themes that focus on their strategic initiatives. Core Themes may include “provide improved levels of customer service, gather a greater share of the customer wallet, and increase levels of regulatory compliance.”. In either case, the project team should be aware of the business strategy and key projects to ensure that the recommended roadmap is aligned.
Once Core Themes are developed, it would be a good idea to gain some level of consensus regarding the Core Themes prior to the results presentation, perhaps with a smaller customer group. Once consensus is reached regarding Core Themes, the client should be engaged in developing the Strategic Objectives for each theme. The strategic objectives will ensure that there are some goals that can be used to track the improvement roadmap success.
Summarising the Results
Once this analysis has been completed, the results need to be packaged and presented to the client. The resulting package should include the following:
Information Maturity QuickScan Results
- List original motivations and objectives for the project.
- Provide a description of the QuickScan survey process.
- List the survey participants and a summary of the responses (e.g. 4 surveys from Knowledge Workers, etc).
- List some quotes from the survey, provided in the Notes column of the survey. These should be organized by the Core Themes.
- Include the Data Management Areas graph, the Framework Areas graph, and the Impacted Process Areas graphs. Some observations should be provided for each.
- It may be useful to draw some observations regarding how the Data Management Areas in general apply to overall IMM level of the organization. That is, the results could indicate that the organization is currently at IMM level 1.6 but desires to get to maturity level 3. This kind of broad conclusion should be approached with caution.
- List the Core Themes as determined by the survey team.
- This last set of conclusions forms the heart of the Current and Target Assessment Deliverable. These are the key conclusions based on the survey results and analysis that the remainder of the DQM phases depend on. For each Core Theme, list the:
- Strategic Objectives
- Data Management Areas
- Business Capabilities, which are the value-creating activities for this theme
- Implication of not addressing these activities, and
- Key Enablers are required for realising the Business Capabilities.
To summarize, Core Themes are conclusions drawn from the priority Data Management Areas based on the survey results. The Business Capabilities are drawn from the individual Capability Statements from the survey. The implications can be drawn from the various benefit information associated with each Capability Statement in the IM QuickScan spreadsheet. The Key Enablers can be drawn from the 5 levels of capability maturity associated with each Capability Statement from the IM QuickScan spreadsheet. Multiple Key Enablers may be required to realize a Business Capability.
Calculating the Economic Value of Information
Targeting Improved Information Value
IM QuickScan results can be used to provide a calculation on the Economic Value of Information in an Organisation.
The high-level steps are as follows:
- The value of the organisation is determined based on market value: VOrg = Share Price x Number of Shares
- BearingPoint has conducted market research to determine an Information Coefficient, IC, that is typical of Financial Services Institutions: VI (theoretical) = VOrg x IC
- IM QuickScan is applied to understand current-state and planned Information Efficiency, IE:
- IEcurrent = IMQS current / IMQS Benchmark
- IEfuture = IMQS future / IMQS Benchmark
- Once an information efficiency ratings have been determined for the current-state and target-state, the potential value gains can then be quantified.
- VI (estimated) current = VI (theoretical) x IEcurrent
- VI (estimated) future = VI (theoretical) x IEfuture
- VI (estimated) Gains = VI (estimated) future - VI (estimated) current
- Quantitative estimates can then taken against this largely qualitative model.
The detailed approach can be found here
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