Completing tedious reconciliations and verifications, manually locating duplicate or missing data transmissions, and performing time-consuming system reruns are quickly becoming a thing of the past. Today's information technologies are powering a new set of Information Integrity tools that deliver the accurate, reliable, and consistent information on which continued business success depends.
The rapid evolution of technology has changed everything. Explore how business and technology needs have continually grown throughout the mainframe, online, distributed computing, and Information Integrity eras.
Mainframe Era
For the first time, stand-alone mainframe systems made it possible to automate the validation of input data, and to program internal controls to verify the integrity of the processing logic. However, the implementation of these validations and controls was often ad hoc, arbitrary, and ineffective. Many systems failed or produced erroneous results, and required frequent reruns. However, these failures did not always cause serious business disruptions because batch processing windows allowed employees to correct errors.
Online Era
The implementation of online systems for customer service reduced batch processing windows – and made Information Integrity failures immediately visible to customers. This led to the implementation of automated balancing, and the reconciliation of batch processing outputs. Despite these controls, the complexity of online systems – and the lack of continuity between batch and online controls – exacerbated Information Integrity problems.
Distributed Computing Era
Client/server architectures added complexity to information systems by increasing the number of hardware and software components – and the requisite interfaces. Distributed computing also increased the volume and frequency of data communication, thereby introducing the potential for duplicate, incomplete, missing, or delayed data transmissions. The development of data warehouses – which required the conversion and consolidation of data from many disparate systems – was also fraught with Information Integrity issues.
Information Integrity Era
Today, the rapid evolution of technology is steadily increasing the importance of information accuracy, completeness, and reliability – while at the same time making it possible to implement sophisticated solutions for achieving Information Integrity. Infogix is leading the way in this new Information Integrity Era by providing automated information control solutions that truly deliver on the promise of Information Integrity.
