You shouldn't have an information asset management program without this.

A valuation model.

A valuation model tells us how to value information - how much it's worth based on specific criteria.

We've been telling people that information is an asset on the basis that assets are good, and if we tell people it's an asset it will be good so they'll give us more money - it's simple and compelling logic that I like.

The problem is that at some point, the idea ends up in front of a finance or accounting person, and they're going to ask something like "ok, how much is it worth?"

In slightly more technical terms, they're wanting to know what "future positive cash flows" you expect from that information, and then they'll likely move on to want to understand what the net present value (NPV) of those cash flows is, then they'll want to know how much you want to spend - and if you want to spend more than the net present value, they'll say no.

That sounds complicated - and it is mildly complicated, because valuing information is hard, and finance and accounting are technical disciplines.

The problem for us, is that I don't think we can succeed in our organisations without having the information we hold valued as an asset.

Without a model that our CFO agrees to, we just don't know how much we should be spending to capture, manage and maintain our information resources.

I think the lack of this type of model is why we experience feast or famine funding for our programs.

And we're not going to fix it without a valuation model.