Enterprise Governance
Governance Starts at the Top
More on EDS' Governance Perspectives
EDS Designed for RunTM Keeps Clients on Road to Success
Learn how EDS helps clients develop a map to their IT future and greater understanding of the true cost of getting there.
CIO at the Table
Organizations continue to misstep with technology, not quite understanding the role the CIO should play. Leaders are beginning to learn how to manage and assimilate technology into the mainstream of operations.
Governance is a set of processes by which an organization manages decisions. As a business term, it is applied to many different functions and levels to describe a set way of getting things done.
EDS believes that the most significant of these approaches is “enterprise governance,” an overarching system that seeks to align priorities, funding, and resources and elevates decision making, decision rights, and accountability to the appropriate levels. Organizations that want to stay competitive in an “always on” world must strive to apply this enterprise-level governance framework, with end-to-end customer experiences, long-term objectives and corporate goals defining the way an organization manages decisions.
This can mean a significant change from the current internal operational model to one that engages the senior leadership team and is more integrated with the overall enterprise objectives. Often, a business will need to adjust its approach to management and move it to a higher level of maturity to achieve business, financial, and productivity gains.
Learn More About Enterprise Governance
Ready for Take-Off
by Charlie Feld, EDS
A strong enterprise governance model does more than just incorporate IT into daily operations; it emphasizes disciplined decision making and sets common criteria and processes for those decisions across the organization. This raises the entire operation to a higher level, while optimizing investments and resources.
Read the “Ready for Take-Off” synnovation article here PDF, 745K
Within this approach, it is critical to align technology architecture to the overall business plan, and to integrate processes, applications and infrastructure throughout the enterprise. EDS can advise a client on how to change its internal operational model to one that takes better advantage of technology, making it more flexible, responsive and more integrated with the enterprise as a whole.
Enterprise-level Governance Framework
What We Think
- It isn't just “IT Governance” anymore. You have to have IT Governance as an integral part of Corporate Governance. Corporate officers should be proactive in setting up a Corporate Governance model that assumes accountability for major IT decisions.
- Just as in other areas of Corporate Governance, corporate officers should set “policies” and define “control objectives” to provide direction and to understand and monitor the business value of their IT spend.
- It takes more than a change in technology to improve IT performance. EDS works with clients to adjust their approach to information management and move it to a higher level of maturity to achieve business, budget and productivity gains.
- EDS can advise a client on how to change its internal operational model to one that takes better advantage of technology, making it more flexible, responsive and more integrated with the overall enterprise objectives.
- Governance is just one component of an optimal IT strategy, but governance is the key to getting it right.
EDS Governance Patents Pending
- Service Continuity Management
- Patents: Governance. EDS has a patent pending on a Service Continuity Management process designed to inhibit or minimize interruptions to various services used by an enterprise. Systems such as disaster recovery and backup storage procedures are included. Inventors: Jerry D. Brooks, Mary M. Knight, and Mark A. Welsh.
- Ticket Work Logs
- Patents: Governance. EDS has a patent pending on a tool to improve the usability, manageability, and readability of ticket work logs by providing enhanced navigation capabilities. Inventors: Dung Ngo, Grant Campbell, and Beth McGreevy.
- Automation of Asset Data Reconciliation
- Patents: Governance. EDS has a patent pending on a mechanism to capture data on IT assets via normal incident reports. The resulting efficiencies will enable EDS to manage and maintain real-time asset data with minimal additional resources, both for itself and its customers. Inventors: Jack Pan-Chen and Sabari Devadoss.
- Virtual Assembly Line for Unified Engineering (VALUE)
- Patents: Governance. EDS has a patent pending on a methodology that helps standardize manufacturing processes globally. This drives consistency in manufacturing and helps predict costs. Inventor: Brent Blackburn.
- Transition Tool
- Patents: Governance. EDS has a patent pending on improvements to its Business Change Lifecycle framework for implementing outsourcing transitions. The improvements include being able to more easily use the framework to achieve a client's business benefit and achieving more timely updates to content. Inventors: Sandy Christiansen, Matt Reid, Carl Neer.