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A Company and its Data 5

“And what about your software and your databases? They
represent a fountain of knowledge of the company’s
processes. These pieces of software embody the Information
System, especially as your IT systems support all the
company’s processes. There are, without a doubt, no
decisions or operations without the support of computers as
a tool. Do you realize the importance of this and do you know
how to measure it?”

“No. How could we measure it? It’s impossible.”

“If you cannot evaluate it, then you will not be able to
measure the impact of IT on the Information System. You
are not in a position to do it because the capital asset value
of the Information System, the one that you should find out,
is trapped in IT systems that are not readily accessible to the
business, in programming languages and databases only
understood by your IT experts. At best, only a part of the IS
assets are known via reporting tools, business intelligence
tools and workflows for certain business processes.”

“And how could it be otherwise?”

“By putting together another IT system. You need to get
the IS assets out of your software. Among these assets, it is
important to first consider the reference and master data.
You need a solution enabling business users to take control
of their reference and master data, via a unified tool applied
across the whole of your IT system, and with governance
functions allowing the business users to enhance this data,
depending on the version and use contexts (country,
organization, etc.), querying and auditing them, and rating
their reliability. This concerns very large domains of data,
ranging from product and service descriptions to business
regulatory configurations. Its financial value is estimated
using tools such as benchmarking. For example, at the time
of a takeover by another company, your company would be in
a position to compare its data repository for product