Gerald Naidoo is CEO of Logikal Consulting

Despite the incredible sums of money businesses around the world have invested in IT, the direct correlation between those investments and the financial performance of the business, the productivity of employees, the ability to grow and innovate, and the ability to more accurately plan and forecast, seem to have all eluded senior decision-makers.

The dramatic impacts that even marginal investments in IT can have when that technology addresses data quality, usability, and intelligence, are often ignored. While large-scale investments in IT have certainly helped improve basic data access and quality, there is still room for major performance gains through additional investments in technology.

In every industry or vertical, five attributes of data (quality, usability, intelligence, remote accessibility and sales mobility) have a dramatically positive effect on key financial measures. Relatively small improvements in these attributes can pay off with big financial returns.

Businesses are not really designed for the Information Age.

Almost all companies are organised along functional lines, with the various departments and business units connecting at the top. Most day-in, day-out management is conducted vertically. In contrast, most data flows horizontally. The obvious conclusion is that horizontal data flows to create value, and day-in, day-out vertical management are completely misaligned. Further, data spends much of its time in transit, effectively in the “white space” of the organogram, where it is essentially unmanaged.

Adding to the woes brought about by the misalignment of management and data flows, is confusion about the respective management roles of the IT department and the business when it comes to data. Indeed, many people automatically assume that data and information are largely “systems issues” and therefore the natural province of IT.

Businesses should look at evolving their management systems to better utilise data and information, improve their quality, and account for the special challenges in managing them. Organisations should adopt the stance that data and information are the province of the business, responsible for the quality of data they create, and are responsible for ensuring their people can find the data they need.