logo for information-management-architect.com
Home
Strategy
Framework
Business Case Analysis
Project Planning
Requirements Analysis
Architecture & Design
Build Phase
Quality Assurance
Transition to Production
Management Information
Business Intelligence
Data Warehouse
Tools
Jobs
Contact David Bowman
leftimage for information-management-architect.com

People Information Management

Accountable for people information management and want some practical suggestions to reduce information management costs?

What types of people and organization information are required?

Most companies require information about people and organizations suchPeople Management as:
  • Customers;
  • Employees;
  • Suppliers;
  • Vendors;
  • Contractors;
  • Internal departments;
  • Branch offices; and
  • Subsidiary companies.
Where is people and organization information stored?

People information is frequently stored in a variety of individual management information systems such as:
  • Sales;
  • Marketing campaign management;
  • Contact management;
  • Order entry;
  • Billing;
  • Invoicing;
  • Human resource management;
  • Contract management;
  • Project time reporting and management;
  • Customer relationship management; and
  • Enterprise resource management.
What are some people information management similarities?

People and organizations share some key information concepts that need to be tracked e.g.
  • Relationships. Persons may have relationships with other persons or organizations. A person may have a relationship as employee with one department and then switch to another; a customer may have a relationship as a client with one sales representative and then switch to a new sales territory or sales representative.
  • Addresses. People and organizations both have addresses;
  • Contact method. People and organizations are both contacted via email; web site URL’s, phone numbers, fax numbers; and
  • Contact information. Most companies have a need to track communications such as email, customer contact, etc.
What are some information challenges?

People information is generally captured in a variety of source applications. This presents some synchronization issues.

Imagine you call your cell phone company and give them a change of address. The customer database may be updated but the next day, a bill is sent to the old address by the billing system, which was not synchronized with the master customer database. This is a common type of data challenge.

Suppose your company gives away free product samples and offers to send them by mail to people who fill out questionnaires at retail stores.

How do you know if you are sending duplicates?

People may write their name correctly but there may be many variations e.g. John Doe, J. Doe, 123 Main Street SE, 123 Main Street South East. Some companies are interested in eliminating duplicates so as to minimize costs.

Why is information management important?

People and organizations are involved in many business functions such as:
  • Customers place product orders;
  • Employees take product orders;
  • Products are shipped to customers;
  • Vendors provide products;
  • Companies send requests for quotes or proposals to companies;
  • Employees report time and expenses on projects; and
  • Organizations and people are involved with contracts and other agreements.
If every application captures and stores people and organization data, then there is a lot of redundant processing. This increases the information management costs e.g.
  • There is cost associated with synchronizing data between management information systems;
  • There are additional data quality issues and costs as different systems may capture data using different rules;
  • There are additional data movement costs as it is necessary to load data warehouses from multi sources and to sort out which data is the correct version and the most accurate version.
What is a better way to manage this information?

Create a logical model and then use it to drive the design of a single relational database to store people and organization data. Applications that need this data should then access the common database.

What are the benefits of this approach?

One database will:
  • Eliminate redundant data;
  • Reduce database administration cost;
  • Improve data quality; and
  • Provide better return on information management investment.
Is this the only way to manage this information?

Realistically, most companies have a significant investment in current applications and cannot afford the redesign and development effort.

Master data management programs are becoming a practical, but perhaps expensive, means of ensuring synchronization of key data among applications.


What are the benefits of master data management?

A sound master data management program will ensure data synchronization between systems and eliminate many of the issues that currently exist.

However, these are expensive options and will not address all of the issues concerning redundant data e.g. they will not normally de-duplicate customer names and addresses.
 
Summary…

People management information is used by almost every corporate management information system and needs to be managed to avoid storing redundant data.

Data storage designs should be based in an enterprise logical data model to ensure better return on information management investment.


footer for Information management page