Inside NIRMA Magazine Summer 2018 - FINAL

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attended the Asset Management Ecosystem conference in Baltimore this year where asset management experts from around the world talked “going digital” and “how to get new value” from their assets. Challenges were presented that organizations face as they try to get more value from their assets. A common touch point among the various presentations was the idea of “kings and kingdoms” of information being a nearly insurmountable obstacle to gaining more value from asset information. This is not a new story, nor is it confined to asset management. LNS Research just published a new report on risk management that made the same case; namely that siloed information is a barrier to maximizing an organization’s risk management programs. The need to leverage more information faster is a challenge that every organization faces. What is perhaps “different,” is solving this challenge. If we think about various forms of governments and organizations of the past, there are many parallels in how we manage documents and information. From monarchies to oligarchies to democracies, nations and organizations have tried to find the perfect balance of governance to obtain their KINGS AND KINGDOMS Do we need a revolution? By Jim Newman Sr. Director of Product Management, Bentley Systems best outcomes. So, in today’s world, what are the options? Organizations have for decades attempted to create a single source of truth – the be-all, end-all container of information for all decision making (much like a monarchy). In most organizations, that vision never came close to being true. Likewise, organizations live in a hybrid world of databases, spreadsheets, and self-owned repositories of information where each “owner” has a say in how that information is used (democratic information management). Since neither option has gotten the results that most organizations want, what does a new model look like? Can we leverage the power of existing kingdoms while gaining more control and clarity over the information that helps us make decisions at every level of the organization? Can we really obtain this idea of “digital line of sight” or “alignment” that we need? When Kingdoms Collide Let’s think about why kingdoms exist within organizations. Operations, maintenance, and engineering teams have unique needs for information, even if sometimes, the “root” of that information is common. How you operate a pump is quite different than the information needed to replace it or to maintain it. Sometimes, these different needs and outcomes result in conflict between the kingdoms, as one needs to “make it Turn to Kings and Kingdoms on page 17. 16 Summer 2018 NIRMA.org Inside NIRMA
Kings and Kingdoms Continued from Page 16 run” while another kingdom is responsible for “keeping it new.” Meanwhile, the corporate kingdom just wants to understand the financial implications that their combined assets will deliver. But each kingdom needs to have information from other kingdoms to make better decisions and achieve the organization’s corporate goals. So, to continue our parallel between government and organizations, what would that model look like? In a world that is increasingly going digital, building a connected data environment is the answer that enables the federated kingdoms to find their greatest value. Federated Kingdoms The European Union was intended to be a federated trade organization. The target was not to usurp or overthrow existing kingdoms and their governments. Instead, the concept was to enable federated kingdoms to work together and improve their economic prosperity, first through reducing trade barriers and later by solving additional objectives that the member states deemed important. What could this model tell us about how organizations might solve the “kings and kingdoms” problems that exist today? Every “kingdom” within an organization exists for a reason and brings with it some strengths. What is “missing” is the common federation between those kingdoms that enable this expertise to be leveraged most efficiently to achieve the common, corporate-wide goals. In our analogy, this would equate to dropping trade barriers between nations to eliminating information barriers across an organization. So, what if there were a way to “keep the kingdom” where that makes sense, but still obtain this idea of a “federated set of nations” that work together to obtain higher goals than any individual kingdom could ever obtain or the “non-federated” set could ever achieve? It is this concept of “federated kingdoms” that results in the need for a connected data environment in today’s organizations. Unlike the traditional “common data environment,” which implies single repositories of truth and “single sovereignty” over information, connected data environments enable organizations to determine where sovereignty over information quality and consistency should live. Digital workflows enable each kingdom to manage their part of information quality while ensuring that other kingdoms are not negatively impacted by unmanaged or unplanned change. Digital contexts then enable each of the federated nations to leverage the combined, consistent, and trusted information to make decisions related to their own individual needs, while also ensuring that the organization’s larger contexts are also visible, actionable, and sustainable. Through federated information management, organizations can leverage the expertise of their teams and develop best-practice, discipline-specific workflows, while enabling the organization to leverage the vast knowledge existing across the federated kingdoms. This results in better visibility and better decision-making. So, is it time for a revolution? Should we storm the gates of each kingdom within an organization and dethrone the existing government? Or, should we consider how to build our own organizational unions, leverage the expertise of various disciplines, and federate them into a more powerful organization that manages and distributes information across the organization to achieve the desired outcomes. In a world that is increasingly going digital, building a connected data environment is the answer that enables the federated kingdoms to find their greatest value. Jim Newman is senior director of product management with Bentley Systems. He can be reached at jim.newman@bentley.com. Inside NIRMA NIRMA.org Summer 2018 17
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