Organisations face increasing challenges in managing their information. This may appear counter-intuitive since technologies to manage structured data such as enterprise resource planning and data warehouses are relatively mature. However, these business applications do not provide sustainable benefits if the underlying information governance and information architectures are ineffective. This issue is exacerbated since managing unstructured data requires a variety of newer technologies including content management, document management and search engines with associated information management challenges. How can Chief Information Officers (ClOs) respond to these challenges and use the changes to increase their contributions and develop an effective information strategy? One key enabler is information governance which incorporates both business alignment and the management of risk. This needs to be linked to an information architecture that fits the evolving business model. This paper develops an information management framework to explore both the structured and unstructured information worlds linked to control and exploitation capabilities. The model has been tested with information-intensive organisations and one of these has been selected to illustrate the development of information governance and architecture. The case organisation, Yell has been on a six year journey starting with the appointment of a commercial data manager and reaching a position where it has acquired expertise in all the different areas of the information management framework. Building on this success and some difficult lessons, it set up an information governance structure sponsored by a board-level steering group. This paper analyses the award-winning company to establish what have been the critical success factors and what recommendations emerge for other organisations. For example, achieving success depends on skilled people as much as the introduction of technology. The results are evaluated in the context of the information management framework and proposals are made for further theoretical and practical research.
