As i look around at some of the leading companies across the globe, I find a state of chaos across these companies, especially in information management. What is interesting to note is that the problem transcends Fortune 100 to Small Business and is very similar. Where did things go wrong? all these companies have spent valuable dollars to improve information management.

Deeper investigation reveals several gaps and loopholes. The vendors that came to provide strategy and technology services addressed "point in time" problems and developed focused solutions. With the craziness of technology improvements, market conditions (m&a), business changes all coming together, the entire situation is like playing "poker" at the high stakes tables in Vegas.

How do we unravel from the state of chaos to a state of order. Hiring more strategy consultants is not the only answer. We need to do a holistic overview of the business situation and find out where issues have come from and how the current solution process will address today and the future.

In order to recover from a state of chaos to clarity, you need to look at the strength of the organization and its people, assess its technological prowess, its competition, business value, market value, strategic maturity and adoption of processes in the organization and more.

However doing all this in a short span requires a great deal of focus and more maturity from the vendor that will be hired for this exercise. Size does not matter in this spectrum.

A vendor rating from the Analyst community is a starting edge of this process, but that alone is not enough, we need to ask for organization maturity, delivery capability and much more to not repeat the mistakes to get to a state of chaos. Sometimes a few "niche" vendors may be needed to solve the larger problem.

To be continued.....