It’s not easy being digital. Even from a personal perspective, the range of digital devices I’ve accumulated and use over the past few years has grown exponentially. From digital cameras to (multiple) wireless phones to PDAs to (again, multiple) laptops to on-line services such as gmail, I have my fingerprints all over the digital world.
While the results have been great – I’m able to manage, communicate and produce more effectively than I ever have before – I spend a much larger portion of my time managing and integrating data, even at this personal level. Instead of an old-fashioned and single address book, I have multiple digital address books. I have email directories duplicated (and perhaps out-of-synch) across multiple systems. Try as I might, it’s simply not simple to keep information integrated and in synch.
Unfortunately, over that same period of time, most organizations have been experiencing the same type of problems, but on a much larger scale.
