The EIM Framework shown below guides the application of enterprise best practices in the information lifecycle. To the left and the right are project activities that are enabled by enterprise capabilities in the center. These enterprise capabilities take the form of Competency Centers of repeatable, best-practice process.

Competency Centers are the nexus of people, process, and execution to deliver operational excellence. They standardize and continually improve an enterprise capability for delivering reliable, optimal information. Two foundational competency centers are one for business intelligence and analytics and another for data quality and governance. These are not necessarily organizational structures; they are conceptual and sometimes formed from matrixed teams. Skilled people executing optimized process with enabling technology - brought together in whatever form is the best fit for the organization. Centralized, federated, matrixed - it is what is best for each organization. Other competency centers are formed based upon need such as: Data Science to support data mining, machine learning and statistical modeling, Business Process Management, or even information-centric functional groups such as customer relationship management. The comptency center construct may be leveraged for any information-centric function.

At the top of the EIM Framework in green are the process components; at the bottom in blue are the technical underpinnings. The information capability is provisioned as a service to the enterprise in this model. The focus is not on tools, but in wrapping effective process around the tools to manage the information lifecycle from information producer to information consumer. This process creates the actionable insight from which value is derived.