A couple of decades ago, especially in the early days of data warehousing and as ideas of information as an asset were starting to take hold, information professionals started putting forward the notion of conceiving and architecting the production, flow, enhancement, and availability of information as a type of supply chain. An information supply chain. The supply chain is an excellent metaphor to visualize, define and refine, and assess the processes and resources for the information life cycle. Particularly for a unidirectional analytics environments. Even though the term supply chain sounds like it focuses on the supplier, supply chains are actually designed with the customer in mind. Therefore, the concept can help information management professionals keep top of mind the kinds of business outcomes we discussed earlier. Typically, a supply chain begins with the harvesting, collection, or generation of some kind of raw material. Although I personally shy away from the pedantic discussion of differentiating data from information, in a supply chain context it may be somewhat relevant to discern raw material, from finished product. As we'll see, adding value to data to turn it into information is rarely a single step or obvious transformation. In our supply chain metaphor, data are the raw, original transactions, text files, emails, images or the like. They often have utility only in the context of the process that created or captured them in the first place. While it sounds straightforward enough, even the most simple supply chains involve a host of moving and tightly coordinated moving parts. The Supply Chain Operations Reference or SCOR model, lays out these processes. Borrowing from supply chain best practices, Information Supply Chain or ISC planning, should ensure the process flow is integrated from front to back, ensure the ability to simulate what-if scenarios for information production delivering usage, have flexibility for demand volatility and ensure that all individuals and organizations involved understand their downstream and upstream impact. It also involves planning for costs, fulfillment cycle times, return on assets and working capital, demand planning and management, or pull-based inventory replenishment. Also, inventory recording practices and dozens of other procedures and considerations, some of which have relevance in an information supply chain context. Sourcing, deals with how materials are acquired, how to manage inventory, supplier networks, supplier agreements, and how to handle payments and revenues, along with how materials are transmitted and received, and also how they're verified. You can see how these concepts relate to similar concepts in the information world. Making, includes the activities for turning materials into finished goods. This step may include production activities, packaging, staging, and releasing. Delivering is the order management, warehousing, and transportation of goods. It also includes product life cycles and import-export requirements. Returning, refers to the processing of defective products which, in an information context, may not be so relevant since data is rarely returned. But this process could also include information user support activities. A few years ago, the Supply Chain Council announced an update to the SCOR model to add Enable as a sixth process. This process represents the management of business rules, regulatory compliance, and data management. Other enablement processes also translate directly into the information supply chain concept. The SCOR model also provides a few levels of detail for scoping, configuring and process or performance attributes. These details enable the handling of specific supply chain scenarios such as make-to-stock vs make-to-order, supply chain configurations for general and custom goods and services respectively. Differentiating these two configurations for the supply chain of information can be helpful in designing for generalized information such as data warehouses or data lakes, or specified information purposes such as an architected data mart or report, input to a new application, or a partner data feed request. Typically, make-to-stock scenarios are executed not based on supposition but on a forecast. In an information context, this could refer to the vision for information we talked about earlier. Make-to-order scenarios usually require some additional tasks for specking, producing, testing, staging and releasing in collaboration with the actual customer. The information productionalization steps we've discussed earlier, are representative of a make-to-order scenario. In more sophisticated supply chains, they appear and behave more as networks. Flows of goods and services among suppliers, distributors, payment processors, and customers. Accordingly, organizations should characterize their information life cycles in this way as well. Note that the SCOR model also includes some 200 key indicators and metrics of supply chain operations performance. So which indicators of information supply chain performance can you think of that you would recommend?
