Advisory Services
Leverage Astral’s extensive experience to set the strategic direction for how to manage, govern and drive value from your organisation’s data assets.
Astral is highly regarded in the industry for our business and technical expertise, and as vendor independent, are best positioned to provide an impartial assessment of how you can best meet your Enterprise Information Management (EIM) requirements to deliver your business outcomes.
Independent assessment of your EIM processes to identify ways to derive greater business value
- Astral leverages our extensive EIM experience to provide a snapshot of the current state of the EIM processes across the organisation.
- We provide an independent assessment to both identify areas for improvement and areas of opportunities, to help an organisation derive greater value from its information assets.
- Astral will address the specific EIM compliance obligations relevant to the organisation and the industry it operates in (e.g. SOCI, APRA, Government etc).
- As part of the EIM Health Check, we will engage with business and IT representatives to develop an understanding of:
- Current EIM maturity level using industry models
- Impact of EIM capability on staff productivity and business performance
- EIM risk assessment rating, including ability to meet compliance obligations
- The results of the EIM Health Check include clear recommendations on the actions required to address the findings, aligned with business priorities.
Combine your business knowledge and our EIM expertise to deliver result
- Astral will help you set the strategic direction for the management of information that aligns with your business and IT strategies.
- We have extensive experience in:
- Developing detailed enterprise strategies that take into consideration the people, processes, and pragmatic changes necessary to achieve the desired outcome,
- Advising on standards and best practices specific to your industry,
- Detailed business consultation to determine the level of maturity across the business by assessing your current information management practices and processes, and
- Preparing an implementation Roadmap that takes into consideration your organisation’s culture, your EIM maturity, and experience, short-term business benefits, and long-term objectives. We can provide you with detailed and accurate estimates for all components, such as infrastructure, software, external resources, and commitment from internal resources.
- We will work with you to build a business case to support the implementation of the EIM Roadmap.
- Together, we will determine the most appropriate approach to introduce, or extend, the role of EIM in your business
Driving enterprise information value through Information Governance
- Information governance (IG) is a strategic framework of standards, processes, roles and metrics that ensure organisational and individual accountability for managing information assets. As a cross-disciplinary practice, information governance touches on law, records management, information technology, security management, and business analysis. It calls for a new breed of information professionals who are competent across diverse and complex fields.
- Information governance capability is becoming even more important as businesses increasingly rely on data and information to drive core services, operational processes, customer interactions, and supply chains. Companies are also subject to a broader range of compliance conditions, including sustainability goals and reporting requirements, which rely heavily on information governance capability.
- There is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to information governance. The right approach is highly dependent on factors such as:
- Current information governance maturity
- Nature of business operations
- Business priorities and strategy
- Current and planned technology ecosystem
- Compliance and regulatory environment.
- Astral will work with you to evaluate your organisation’s IG maturity using industry standard tools, leveraging our extensive experience in IG/EIM engagements. Together we will map out an approach to IG that is pragmatic and relevant to the operating & compliance environment in which the organisation works.
Get it right the first time with a tried tested IG Framework
- Every enterprise has a unique ecosystem, that can be represented in an Operational Model of business functions and associated business processes. This also identifies information flows, in and around the organisation, that should be included in an Information Architecture.
- Your enterprise Information Architecture acts as a bridge connecting your information, data, technology, customers, and staff. Astral applies information science to design structures and systems for labeling, navigating, and searching information, that facilitates discovery and understanding.
- Information Architecture supports an Information Governance (IG) Framework that:
- Develops rules and processes for the management of your information assets.
- Identifies key stakeholders
- Defines the ultimate business outcomes
- Balances all business drivers and stakeholder requirements, and
- Is implemented through an incremental approach based on your organisational priorities and existing programs of work
- Astral will work with you to define an IG Framework that meets your organisation’s specific business and compliance requirements.
Building the Pathway for maximising the value of your Information
- As your organisation’s information grows, so too do your challenges with data structure and interoperability across data sets and systems. Your users’ inability to find the information they need in a timely manner, or information whose reliability or currency they can trust, can result in a lot of re-work and inefficient processes.
- This also impacts compliance requirements that cannot be fulfilled because the required information cannot be organised and presented. Similarly, technological innovation projects that promise significant process improvement benefits are stymied because the data sets are siloed across systems and not aligned with one another.
- These challenges can be resolved by using our industry expertise and knowledge of specific systems to develop an Information Architecture that reflects your business functions and processes and implement these across your business solutions.
- An enterprise-wide information taxonomy and metadata model will align the data structures across your systems. Such alignment will enable the users to search and retrieve the right information at the right time, ensure that compliance obligations are fulfilled, and facilitate digital transformation projects.
- Astral draws on our extensive experience across a wide range of industries to streamline the development of the information architecture, whilst tailoring it to meet your specific requirements.
Apply the enterprise controls to streamline the management & governance of information
- The ability of organisations to meet compliance obligations relating to information (and records) management is increasingly challenged by the exponential growth of data and the number of disparate systems used to manage information.
- In addition to records management requirements, organisations may be subject to industry specific obligations that impact how information is managed (e.g. SOCI, APRA, Government) which change and extend over time.
- Organisations can struggle to clearly understand what is required to ensure compliance and to put the appropriate controls in place.
- Astral can work with you to define:
- EIM (including records management) policies and procedures,
- A pragmatic retention and disposal schedule, and
- An implementation approach that marries the compliance obligations with the capabilities of the EIM system(s), and the changes in business practices.
“Our partnership with Astral delivers a depth of information management (IM) expertise that was previously not available to the business. Astral supports us to successfully drive value from our enterprise information to deliver positive business outcomes, whilst importantly uplifting internal IM subject matter expertise via their integrated team approach. Astral are currently rolling out our controlled documents framework across our global operational sites”.
Information Governance Lead – Global Mining Services Organisation
Enterprise Controlled Document Framework
Controlled Documents are reference documents which, through the course of their lifecycle may be reviewed, modified, and distributed many times. Examples of controlled documents include: technical drawings, specification procedures, data-sheets, contracts, application forms and plans.
Business Challenges
From an enterprise perspective, organisations use controlled documents (such as Policies, Procedures and Work Instructions) to drive standard, authorised and consistent behaviours across the company. Organisations requiring ISO 9000 certification and managing Quality Management Systems have a requirement to maintain documented information to the extent necessary to support the operation of processes and retain documented information to the extent necessary to have confidence that all processes are being carried out as planned.
Business Solution
The purpose of the Controlled Documents quick start framework is to enable and manage the lifecycle of controlled documents within all areas of the business. The solution provides a functional structure and quick-start workflow process to manage the lifecycle of controlled documents.
The framework design (product agnostic) provides the following:
- Folder structure driven by core business functions
- Simple controlled document framework (document types, review periods, approval history)
- Approval workflow
- Identified custom control types to facilitate extension of framework
Business Benefits
- Easy to use including, automated document classification, consistent process and tools for business and a standard set of document types
- Easy to link to latest released version to support key activities in the asset management lifecycle
- Framework enables adoption across all areas of the business, and provides extensions to meet unique IM / safety requirements
- Different areas of the organisation can adopt framework at different stages
