Information as a Strategic Resource
"Drowning in data, yet starved of information"
(Ruth Stanat in 'The Intelligent Organization')
One of the dilemmas facing today's manager is that on the one hand they seem to be suffering from information overload, yet on other hand, they often they complain about shortage of information needed to make vital decisions.
Symptoms of overload are a growth of incoming information, including electronic mail, an explosion in the volume of information sources (there are over 10,000 business newsletter titles and a similar number of CD-ROM titles). Symptoms of scarcity are the lack of vital information for decision making, unexpected competitor moves and the inability to find the relevant 'needle in the haystack'
There is also the crucial problem of exploiting an organisation's proprietary information as a strategic asset.
Underlying these problems is that of having "the right information, in the right place, in the right format, at the right time".
1. Understand the role of Information.
Information can add value to your products and services. Improved information flows can improve the quality of decision making and internal operations. Yet many managers do not fully understand the real impact of information - the cost of a lost opportunity, of a poor product, of a strategic mistake - all risks that can be reduced by using the appropriate information.
2. Assign Responsibility for Leading your IRM Initiative.
Developing value from information resources is often a responsibility that falls between the cracks of several departments - the user departments in different business units, and corporate planning, MIS units or librarians..
3. Develop Clear Policies on Information Resources
Policies for ascertaining information needs, acquiring and managing information throughout its life cycle. Pay particular attention to ownership, information integrity and sharing. Make the policies consistent with your organisational culture.
4. Conduct an Information Audit (Knowledge Inventory).
Identify current knowledge and information resources (or entities), their users, usage and importance. Identify sources, cost and value. Classify information and knowledge by its key attributes. Develop knowledge maps. As knowledge management gains prominence, this is sometimes called a knowledge inventory "knowing what you know".
5. Link to Management Processes.
Make sure that key decision and business process are supported with high leverage information. Assess each process for its information needs.
6. Systematic scanning.
Systematically scan your business environment. This includes the wider environment - legal and regulatory, political, social, economic and technological - as well as the inner environment of your industry, markets, customers and competitors. Provide selective and tailored dissemination of vital signs to key executives. This goes beyond the daily abstracting service provided by many suppliers.
7. Mix hard/soft, internal/external.
True patterns and insights emerge when internal and external data is juxtaposed, when hard data is evaluated against qualitative analysis. Tweak your MkIS system to do these comparisons.
7. Optimize your information purchases.
You don't have to control purchasing, but most organisations do not know how much they are really spending on external information. By treating consultancy, market research, library expenses, report and databases as separate categories, many organisations are confusing media with content.
8. Introduce mining and refining processes.
Good information management involves 'data mining', 'information refining' and 'knowledge editing'. You can use technology such as intelligent agents, to help, but ultimately subject matter experts are needed to repackage relevan
Answered by
Gyan Singh
, an ibibo Master,
at
11:22 AM on October 09, 2008