Information Governance and Content Analytics – A Match Made in Heaven

The media hype for Information Governance seems to have slowed down a bit. I think all the CIO’s, once they understood the term also understood that it is an undertaking that involves the entire organization, from infrastructure to business processes. On the other hand, the hype about Big Data has been softened to data, reverting back to the term Business Intelligence, and content/text analytics. But to optimize the enterprise to gain business advantages, these two seemingly different projects are quite complimentary to each other and must be merged to achieve business results by extracting value and knowledge from content assets.

The two have much in common. The first is data – structured and unstructured. The combination of the two, can deliver the keys to the kingdom. This is where it gets complicated. Think about data. The diversity of data is mind boggling. Everyone is familiar with the typical unstructured and semi-structured data, but now IT must face the challenges of video, audio, and messaging. Infrastructure must be changed, if required, to solve the still siloed repositories of either useless or valuable content. Cloud services, BYOD, bring your own application, social media, input from external machines, paper filing systems must also be addressed. Regulatory, financial, and legal ramifications are becoming more of a challenge every day. It’s a very long laundry list for any enterprise to tackle. And that’s before we even get to the marriage of Information Governance and Business Intelligence. Most organizations would be lacking in resources and time to tackle all of these challenges.

It seems much easier to tackle the Business Intelligence (or whatever term you prefer). But I would question how accurate the results would be? Without some Information Governance you would never know. For better or for worse, the two remain inter-mingled.