A few years ago, Carl Frappaolo of Market Intelligence authored an AIIM Market Intelligence Report on Enterprise Report Management (ERM – formerly known as COLD; basically it’s electronically managing mainframe reports and print jobs). The AIIM report identifies a widespread problem in ERM, and this post offers a solution. I describe a best practice if you’re trying to get someone in your organization – someone from senior management – to take ownership of the organization’s enterprise reports.
According to the AIIM report, enterprise reports are managed poorly, and at least one reason for this is the lack of a proper owner. There are two points here. The first is that ownership is typically fragmented. The second point is that the proper owner is senior management – not IT, and not a consortium. I apologize for the long quotations that follow, but I think they’re worth it:
The lack of a formalized strategy for managing enterprise reports is probably linked to the fact that no single entity is typically tasked with providing custodianship over the reports….This fragmentation of ownership stands in defiance to the need for a centralized and formalized approach to enterprise management and access, and further highlights the general casual nature with which ERM is approached today.
These organizations leave themselves most vulnerable to process inefficiencies, data duplication, and potential misuse of enterprise reports.
Although they are perhaps stored online in an IT-owned platform, the enterprise reports themselves are business entities. They should no more be managed by IT than contracts that happen to be stored in an online repository. (page 9)
It’s important to note that we’re concerned with comprehensive “ownership” of the reports, rather than narrowly focusing just on technological or recordkeeping purposes, for example. The reports have “offensive”, “defensive”, and “administrative” requirements that should be overseen and managed effectively:
- Offensive: Reports should effectively and efficiently further the firm’s line-of-business purposes.
- Defensive: Reports should help reduce risk, ensure compliance, and reduce the cost of such compliance.
- Administrative: Reports should be managed so that they effectively and efficiently fulfill the firm’s offensive and defensive requirements, and no reports should be created or maintained that do neither.
So what’s the best practice for getting senior management to take ownership of enterprise reports? Don’t call it ownership and don’t call them owners. Call it decision-making and call them decision-makers (but not deciders). I’m serious, and this was not my idea. Some of our clients have started to do this, and it’s worked. VPs who were unwilling to “own” enterprise reports (an unreadable mess spawned from mainframe technology;- who could blame them?) were willing to be decision-makers. With such high-level support, we and our clients could start making progress in cleaning up the mess.