Unlocking the Value of Information:
The Move from Content Management to Intelligently Managing All Enterprise Information—
A talk with David Mennie, Director of Product Marketing, EMC
I wondered whether the business-critical nature of these applications have permeated the thinking of the C-level executives? Because before... not so much. It was a technical issue that didn't get on their radar. "That's an interesting question, because one of the things these new applications unlock is ‘visibility.' I'm not saying that a CEO or a chief customer officer wants to see all the minutiae of everything their knowledge workers are dealing with, but they absolutely want to see the trends, and they want to be aware of problems that might be occurring before they become major issues."
The key is the way in which that information is delivered. "The trends that are discovered, the analytics that are captured, and the visual reports workers view can be custom-tailored to any role. A team lead may want to see how their direct reports are handling a particular work queue. A supervisor might want to see where the problems exist across the entire department. A C-level executive might want to see where the overall trends are taking them... where are the hottest sectors in which we sell; what's the average close time. These tools really can roll up or down to various levels of interest. They can be role-based to show exactly what users want to see and surface critical insight. But it helps the business at all levels—with top-level decisions about where to invest and where to rotate the business, and with lower level decisions about where to apply resources, based on this week's activity." But, to David, a single tool like Documentum xCP can be used for it all... it's just a matter of how you compose and configure the components.
The emergence of big data is a fairly passionate one for David and EMC. "Big data absolutely matters for businesses that understand it. But if you think of it in terms of a "hype-cycle" thing, says David, you're never going to get anywhere. "The companies that DO understand it see the immediate ROI and value in unlocking this vast amount of data and they can see a huge payback." He uses the insurance business as a great example. "It's one thing to look at your driving record and take your word for it and say, ‘hey, you haven't had any accidents so you're probably a pretty low risk driver.' But it's another thing to have telematics that come from the car and get fed back to the insurance company. And we're now talking about 10,000 to 20,000 datapoints per vehicle per month."
I have to agree. Multiply that by millions of vehicles and that adds up to some big data. That's a massive amount of information to cull through. "But on the other hand," adds David, "if I can also gather information on the brand of vehicle, driving habits, accident records, I can get a very accurate assessment of that person's risk, and make a much better decision."
That, to me, is the overarching value of big data analytics. Taking it ALL—and I mean all—and making a reasoned decision based on existing knowledge, not on guess. He uses the example of an emergency room. Let's say it's a hot day. Let's say the ballpark is across the street. Let's say we know there's a high traffic situation, or maybe even a traffic accident restricting traffic flow. Those are things that would be good to know when staffing the hospital on a given day. That kind of information comes in from many sources, and is not necessarily part of the usual information flow of the organization. What then?
That sort of leads to the obvious conclusion: Do we WANT to have all this information freely available to the insurance companies, healthcare providers, loan officers, doctors, schoolteachers...? "The reality is a lot of people are quite happy to do this, because those insurance companies, banks, healthcare groups aren't willing to ‘take your word for it.' But they WILL reward them for providing information that can help both sides of the equation." So as David will willingly tell you, it's a fine line.
David will also freely admit that some of these applications are only just emerging. "Some of this stuff is early. But the ROI is key. An emergency room that can scale up or down depending on outward situations can better serve their patients and provide a better quality of care, in addition to saving costs and gaining revenue. There are organizations which are absolutely finding the value in analytics and becoming much more data-driven," he insists.
I'll buy it and I also agree that for many organizations it is still early. But that's the way things work: do a little, get some positive results and do a little more.
EMC
176 South Street, Hopkinton MA 01748 • PH: 800.222.3622 or 508.435.1000
Contact: softwaresales@emc.com • Web: www.EMC.com