Why Business Transformation is Difficult

What does Business Transformation look like?  Furthermore, what does the journey to a transformed business look like?  How do you measure success; how do you know you ‘got there’?

These questions are fundamental yet incredibly challenging to answer in business terms.  As a result, the journey to Business Transformation is often embarked upon with vague but grand ambitions and promptly handed over to a technology team to implement.  Little wonder that transformation programmes often go horribly wrong!

The alternative is to ignore Business Transformation altogether and do ‘Continuous Improvement’ instead.  Which is a journey to where?  Continuous Improvement without a vision can become a meander around shiny technology objects.

Information Flow Modelling provides a framework for defining a Continuous Improvement journey to Business Transformation in clear business terms.  That’s a surprising statement because what’s information flow got to do with business transformation?  Let’s start with Purpose…

Information Flow Modelling and Purpose

Purpose is important because it defines:

• Value – business value is based on the support of specific purpose(s)
• Quality – information quality is defined by ‘fitness for purpose‘
• Privacy – permission to use Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is defined by the purpose for which the permission was granted

An Information Supply Chain connects every asset (Information, Process, System, Person) to the purpose which it is supporting.  Therefore an Information Flow Model supports an understanding of value, quality and privacy at the asset level across the entire information ecosystem.

The next step is to use the Information Flow Model to measure operational costs along an Information Supply Chain.  That leads to a definition of Information Waste…

Purpose and Information Waste

Information Waste:  the application of resources (i.e. cost) to low value or inefficient activities.

Low value activities are those which are not delivering to important purposes and inefficient activities are those where the cost could be reduced without impacting value.

Information Waste is created by rework, duplication, de-duplication, paper-based processes… and so on.  Information Flow Modelling supports the discovery and mitigation of Information Waste by assigning value and measuring cost at every asset.

Most organisations will be surprised at the amount of Information Waste they’re burdened with.  Like weeds on the hull of a ship, Information Waste has built up slowly and inevitably until the organisation is exerting all its effort just to survive competitive threats.  For a typical organisation, Information Waste represents well over 50% of the OPEX cost of the Information ecosystem.  Which begs the question: “What would my organisation look like without Information Waste”…

Information Waste and Business Transformation

The complete elimination of Information Waste represents Business Transformation.

If your organisation was a start up, you would design your Information Supply Chains to be smooth and efficient.  Hence there would be no Information Waste.

Seen through this lens we can see what Business Transformation success looks like:  we can set an aspiration of zero Information Waste.  In other words, you can align value and costs and ensure that your activities are made as efficient as possible.  That’s so obvious and straightforward;  why doesn’t everybody already do it?

We don’t do it today because organisations don’t use Information Flow Modelling and Business Transformation only becomes definable and measurable in the context of Information Flow Modelling.  More importantly, you can define  and measure Business Transformation in Continuous Improvement terms…

The Continuous Improvement journey to a Transformed Business

An Information Flow Model is a Conceptual Enterprise Data Model which assigns business value and measures cost at every process.  This means that we can prioritise and sequence change, eliminating each piece of Information Waste one small step at a time.  This is more likely to create good change (Kaizen) which is more likely to engender continuous change (also Kaizen).

You can use Information Flow Modelling to define and measure a Continuous Improvement journey from where you are today to a transformed business

LINQ – the World’s only Information Flow Modelling platform

We built LINQ to enable business leaders to drive Digital Transformation.  Therefore we had to build the Information Flow Model because existing models of the enterprise failed to connect business leaders to the value of Information as an asset.

As a LINQ customer, you could be experiencing this journey.

If you want to start on your Continuous Improvement journey to a Transformed Business, go to www.linq.it and sign up for a Trial Account