What Are The Challenges in Achieving Edm

Achieving EDM is an extensive and prolonged process. In most cases, companies that look for "instant gratification" have shifted their focus somewhere else, due to its complexity and the unlikeliness of it translating into short-term returns. However, recently we have seen the industry shifting its focus back to EDM. Consequently, this is an area of technology that is rapidly evolving and expanding.

The challenges that prevent companies from implementing EDM initiatives have varying levels of complexity and depending on the organization they might various levels of impact on EDM decisions. The main challenge C-level executives face with enterprise data management is its IT complexity. This is due to the high number of companies that still run on legacy systems, which makes incorporating EDM systems more complex, as a legacy systems do not always communicate properly with updated ones. Likewise, companies who choose to store data in legacy systems are more prone to facing availability and security issues. For this reason, some companies evaluate migrating to new systems that incorporate enterprise data management tools, or simply consider taking the steps necessary (budget-wise) to achieve EDM by making larger investments in their infrastructure. However, budget constraints seem to be a hindrance for companies when trying to adopt one of these two approaches mainly because executives usually do not see a concrete returns on investment.

A third challenge in enterprise data management relates to personnel. Only a few companies have teams dedicated to EDM, and most do not have a c-level role responsible to lead in the process of achieving EDM. I would attribute the aforementioned challenge to how in some cases it might be very difficult to obtain board level buy-in. Moreover, companies new to EDM maybe have a difficult time figuring out how to leverage the data for business purposes, which leads to board members preventing executives from making more investments in that area. Furthermore, more issues arise when data ownership is considered due to confidentiality and sensitivity issues.

What are the business drivers for cloud computing? Since its inception, cloud service providers have made the case about the cost savings their services offer, however, there is much more to cloud computing that just cost savings. As business has started to implement cloud services in their processes, they have come to the realization that cloud computing takes infrastructure out of the question, making virtualization possible. The cloud allows businesses to incorporate initiatives faster because the services are readily available, which makes working on projects with time constraints easier. Similarly, one more benefit of the cloud is its scalability. As business needs change, it is much easier to to scale up or down in the cloud, saving companies money on infrastructure investments. Likewise, the success of the cloud has come to benefit both small and large businesses. In the case of small businesses, they can rest assured that all their IT needs can be resolved using a cloud service at a low cost.

It is considered that cloud services come at a lower cost because often you have the option to pay as you go, whereas before business had to invest in building IT infrastructure from scratch, which is both costly and time consuming. By using the cloud, businesses that are just starting out can test their success in the market without worrying about losing money due to large upfront investments in IT services. Before cloud computing started being incorporated in major areas of the business, C-level executives were mostly concerned with the ever-changing business needs with their current infrastructure, which in most cases required a lot of time and effort, especially if what they were trying to accomplish could not be easily resolved with the current IT capabilities of the organization. As business needs changed, executives were spending most of their time maintaining the in-house IT infrastructure, rather than exploring what other technologies could offer.

After incorporating cloud services, executives have more time to think and act strategically, to bring companies up to speed to emerging and rapidly-changing technologies. Moreover, cloud computing provides increased efficiency. The way in which cloud computing achieves efficiency is by utilizing standardized. Standardized services tend to reduce the time spent trying to resolve operational issues, letting employees focus on what really matters, the business. However, increased efficiency not only refers to the time employees waste when legacy systems bring up operational issues and they try to resolves them. It also touches upon the ability of being able to deploy the same service repetitively and achieving the same result every time.

Additionally, cloud services make mergers and acquisitions go smoother from a data perspective. Before it took months and even years in some cases to transfers data from one system to another. Nowadays, cloud computing makes the transition much faster as conjoined organizations can readily access cloud-based systems.

What are some of the Big Data guidelines for entreprise decision makers? Big data refers to data that exceeds the processing capacity of conventional database systems. It is characterized by its volume, velocity and variety. Due to its inherent quality of exceeding what businesses tend to be able to process, before deployment and in addition to figuring out which tool to use, decision makers must consider the following. Decision makers will have to decide between in-house or a cloud-based service. Which option makes the most sense will depend on the importance of having data available locally, privacy, project requirements, personnel availability, etc. For instance, organizations tend to opt or a hybrid solution where they can use on-demand cloud services to supplement their in-house resources.

Another item to consider is that big data is big both to process and transport. Nowadays, when it comes to data management and big data, IT needs are changing and it is the program that needs to move and not the data. It is much easier to run code on a cloud-based service instead of having to pay to transfer data from one place to another.

Likewise, managing big data is a complex task that requires a lot of time and effort. Organizations that work with data can attest that a lot of effort is put into cleaning the data instead of analyzing it. To benefit from big data, businesses must be willing to invest in teams that have the skill set to not only understand the data but they also need to have the capability to leverage it. Moreover, agility should be one other of the considerations. They should look at agility in terms of ease of use and technological flexibility. When it comes to ease of use, the technology must be easy for teams to understand, whether it is because of the architecture and/or because of the availability of information.