‘In most organisations information competencies just aren’t there, because the companies are technology- rather than information-focused.’ says Mike Fishwick, head of Yell Group’s customer information group.

Yell is an international directories business, which operates in the classified advertising market under its Yellow and Business Pages, Yell.com and telephone service brands.

Seven years ago, the company hired Fishwick to develop an information strategy in line with its mission statement of being ‘an information bridge between buyers and sellers’.

A key aim was to win and keep customers, and to drive up customer spending. Improving the quality, consistency and integrity of corporate information was seen as crucial, as was lusing data more effectively.

Yell has two main types of data: customer information – in the form of entries in its directories – and adverts. ‘So to be an information bridge, you have to be able to say that every business will be in the directory, whether they are advertising or have a free-line entry,’ says Fishwick.

To this end, Fishwick set up a commercial data department, separate but parallel to the IT function, to help him deliver on his information architecture goals. The department’s first task was to cleanse and migrate customer data held in disparate operational systems to a new suite of SAP applications, and to put the necessary rules in place to match new records against old ones and keep them up to date.

The process led to the creation of a data factory to handle master data management. ‘If you get the master data wrong, every transaction and process that makes use of it will have errors, which has an exponential impact downstream,’ says Fishwick.

Another key challenge was to find suitable expertise in the shape of data architects and modellers, data stewards and quality analysts, taxonomists and data solution managers among its 30-strong staff.

‘Finding people with all of the necessary skills was very hard,’ says Fishwick. ‘We were looking for people with good information brokerage skills, who could translate what we were trying to do. So they had to have data disciplines, but be commercially savvy and most people are one or the other.’

As a result, he brought in some external data specialists and trained other internal staff with broad-based company knowledge. The move has helped the organisation to grow its revenues, improve the management of its relationship with customers and boost the efficiency of internal business processes.

As a result, Yell plans to set up a cross-business data governance group by the end of the year, to be chaired by Fishwick. The group will comprise senior business stakeholders whose role will be to develop data and information strategies and introduce initiatives both to support and solve individual information problems. Operational key performance indicators will also be introduced across the organisation.

‘Information competence has increased across the organisation and is now on the business agenda. It is higher up the food chain because people understand its importance and can see its impact,’ he says.

Mike Fishwick will be speaking at the Information Management Solutions (IMS) event that runs from 28 to 30 November 2006, at the Grand Hall, Olympia, London. To save £15 on the door, register at www.ims-show.co.uk