“We had the data, but we didn’t have the information.”
– Global Bank Chief Information Officer
I came across this senior financial industry executive’s admission recently when reading about some of the causes of the 2008 Wall Street collapse.
Among the things that became clear to me after a while was that the terms “data” and “information” – although similar – really don’t mean the same thing.
Not earth shattering by any means. But still interesting, I thought.
Forrester Research Vice President Boris Evelson may have put it best:
“We all know how to source, integrate, and access data, but unfortunately many of us…still do not know how to transform it into information, and base the decisions on actual facts, patterns, and trends – (and) not social, political, or emotional pressures.”
Turning Data into Information
Not to beat one’s own drum too loudly, but it occurred to me that ISI is really in the business of helping enterprises turn a seemingly endless stream of UC data into meaningful information that can actually be used to accomplish things.
Or as an ancient playwright or poet may have put it: “Mastery of data into concepts bequeath superior determinations.”
(For everyone’s benefit, I’ll set aside my rather feeble attempt at reciting Old English here.)
However, there is a related topic I would like to touch on. It’s an idea whose very mention might in some circles almost equate to poking the proverbial bear. But here it is:
“Single pane of glass.”
I know what at least some of you are thinking.
“’Single pane of glass?’ Oh, great. An age-old, vendor-inspired, silver bullet prophecy dribbled out on the road to nirvana. Next!”
But hear me out.
Carving Out Communications
Trying to secure a single comprehensive view of all of your internal systems may be impossible – or at least impractical. Unless, of course, your enterprise happens to be NASA. But even NASA doesn’t rely on a single glass pane in Mission Control to get astronauts from liftoff to touch down.
But what if you could carve out a strategic portion of your IT application stack? Let’s say, communications?
That is, take all of the data from all of the like and unlike systems you found there and present it to business line managers as a single pane of information. Intelligence that could be readily accessed, would provide significantly enhanced application visibility, and could be acted upon to better serve your business.
This is what I would suggest ISI UC Analytics does with communications data streams. We provide a Single Pane of Information that:
- Collects all communications data in a single repository;
- Feeds a single reporting engine which can create reports in real-time;
- Eliminates business manager wait times; calls to IT; pulling data from multiple applications; and searching through dissimilar reports from several vendors’ UC platforms; and
- Zeros in on caller-specific path details to identify problems and take corrective action.
And this is just an abbreviated list of ISI UC Analytics’ full capabilities.
Summary
In our view, if it’s just a stream of UC data and not real information, business decision-making suffers. Greatly.
In coming articles, you will see how ISI is bringing this Single Pane of Information idea to life for our customers.
