Information management
for business initiatives
In a nutshell, information
management (IM) is making sure that the right people have the right information
at the right time.
But there’s a lot that goes into
making that happen: Data needs to be processed, contextualized, tagged, and
analyzed in order to become useful information.
Here discussed information
management in a business environment and its background, best practices, and
examines how raw data becomes information.
What Is Information Management (IM)?
In the 1970s, information
management began to emerge from data management as virtual media began to
overtake physical media (punch cards, magnetic tapes, paper, etc.).
As PCs started to replace
mainframes as the primary computing platform in the 80s, and as networked
systems came to prominence in the 90s, information management came into its
own.
The definition
“Information
Management is a multi-faceted discipline that centres on data compliance. An
organization accesses, creates, distributes, manages, stores, protects, and
secures a wide variety of information which requires strong data governance,
access management, and data protection.”
The definition of information
management is constantly evolving as the technology, ideas, and business needs
change.
IM can encompass a cycle of
organizational activities: gathering data, analyzing, categorizing,
contextualizing, and archiving (and in some cases, deleting it), in order to
support a business’ needs.
This means that data and
information have a lifecycle: It’s useful for a period of time, but at some
point it’s no longer valuable.
Like any other business practice,
IM incorporates general management concepts, such as planning, controlling, and execution. Information
management also includes data management and its associated activities.
Data management is the
development and implementation of tools and policies that allow data to
progress from stage to stage during its lifecycle.
Information management has four main components.
People: Not only those involved in
IM, but also the creators and users of data and information.
Policies and Processes: The rules that determine
who has access to what, steps for how to store and secure information must be
stored and secured, and timeframes for archiving or deleting.
Technology: The physical items (computers, filing
cabinets, etc.) that store data and information, and any software used.
Data and Information: What the rest of the
components use.
Four Components of
Information Management
What Information Management Is Not?
IM is often confused with content
management or knowledge management.
While all three processes are
related, and there is some overlap, they do have some differences.
·
Content management deals with data (blocks of
text, images, videos, and more) a website uses, and the covers to organize and
display the data (e.g. XML tags or HTML coding).
·
Knowledge management is similar to library
science, and deals with information for training and education, as well as
knowledge and expertise transfer, and passing on lessons learned.
Principles of Information Management
There are many information
management principles. A well-known set is the Information Management Body of
Knowledge (IMBOK), which is a framework that breaks down management skills into
six knowledge areas and four process areas.
The knowledge areas include the
following:
Information Technology (IT): Hardware and software
Information Systems: IT built into a system that meets business needs and
policies
Business Information: Created by analyzing and contextualizing data using
tools such as the information system
Business Processes: How to evaluate and use the
business information to make decisions
Business Benefit: The desired advantage the
business information will provide
Business Strategy: The master plan that gives a
company a direction. Ideally, decisions made through the business processes,
which are based on business information, will guide the strategy and lead to
the realization of the business benefits.
The IMBOK process areas are:
Projects: Adding new capacity, software, and
hardware to information systems
Business Change: Evaluating information to drive
improvements in processes
Business Operations: The day-to-day of a business.
These will guide improvements based on updates to processes, and will hopefully
increase benefits.
Performance Management: Trying to ensure
operations are running at peak capacity
Data as a Product
In the same way a company
produces something like nuts and bolts, one company department (like IT) can
produce data that other departments (like finance or marketing) or another
business treat like a product or service. With this frame of mind, the
providing entity will see the receiving entity as a customer and therefore may
be more responsive to their needs.
How Data Becomes Information
Data becomes information by
interpretation, analysis, contextualization, processing, and other IM
activities.
For example: A driver’s record of
how many gallons of gas they purchase is data. That same driver calculating
their mileage makes it information. If they chart their mileage by weather
conditions or city versus highway driving, it’s richer information.
In a business context, the number
of pairs of shoes sold and the price paid per pair is data. Charting sales by
store, comparing sales numbers to the previous period, or tracking how many
customers used a coupon makes it information.
While there are many ways of
conceptualizing the way data becomes information, a well-known concept is the
portfolio model created by Andy Bytheway, a Professor of Computer Science at
University of the Western Cape in South Africa. This model posits two axes:
Source: Internal vs. External -
Whether data comes from within an organization (sales figures, email) or
outside (news reports, hourly road conditions).
Structure: Structured versus
Unstructured - Whether data has been analyzed or put in context or is just a
collection of facts.
The most valuable quadrant is internal
structured. This information has been vetted, processed, put in context, and
provides the best basis for business operational decision making.
What Is Strategic Information Management (SIM)?
Strategic information management
(SIM) helps businesses and organizations categorize and process the information
they create and receive.
It can also help companies
recognize opportunities to improve operations through analysis of data usage.
In short, SIM is planning how to
use information to have the biggest positive impact on profits.
What’s an Information Management System?
An information management system
(IMS) is a set of hardware and software that stores, organizes, and accesses
data stored in a database. It also provides tools that allow for the creation
of standardized and ad-hoc reports.
There are numerous kinds of IMSs
that can perform specialized business functions, including the following examples:
Business Intelligence System: Operations use a business
intelligence system to make business decisions based on the collection,
integration, and analysis of the collected data and information.
Customer Relationship Management System: Stores
key information about customers, including previous sales, contact information,
and sales opportunities. Marketing, customer service, sales, and business
development teams often use CRM.
Sales Force Automation System: A specialized
component of a CRM system that automates many tasks performed by sales teams.
It can include contact management, lead tracking and generation, and order
management.
Transaction Processing System: An IMS that
completes a sale and manages related details. On a basic level, it could be a
point-of-sale (POS) system, or a system that allows a traveller to search for a
hotel, and include room options, such as price range, the type and number of
beds, or a swimming pool, then select and book it.
Knowledge Management System: Customer service can use
a KM system to answer questions and troubleshoot problems.
Where Information Management Can Have a Positive Impact
Analyzing data and information to
look for improvement opportunities is a useful method to drive and manage
changes and improvements anywhere in a business.
Here are some key areas where
information management can make the biggest impact:
Projects: Track the
effectiveness of projects and apply the lessons learned to future projects.
Business Operations: Find
out which processes are effective and which are not.
Performance Management:
Study the productivity of teams, managers, and employees, and look for ways to
increase it.
Challenges and Criticisms of Information Management
Information Management has
hurdles and detractors, as is the case for any business discipline. Listed
below are challenges and the best practices that will help mitigate or overcome
these issues:
|
Challenges
|
Related
Best Practices
|
|
Competition and Lack of Coordination Between
Disparate IM Systems
|
·
Design for integration with other applications
·
Interoperability between systems
|
|
Legacy Systems to be Upgraded or Retired
|
·
IT and business collaboration
·
Centralized data management and governance
·
Enterprise-wide data use
|
|
No Clear Strategic Technical or Organizational
Direction
|
·
Centralized data management and governance
·
IT and business collaboration
|
|
Limited adoption by managers and employees
|
·
Ease of use
·
Training, rules, and accountability
·
Centralized data management and governance
·
Audit trails
|
|
Poor quality data and information (e.g.
inconsistent, duplicate, outdated)
|
·
IT and business collaboration
·
Design for integration with other applications
and interoperability between systems
·
Data management
·
Metadata management
·
Data quality management
|
|
Lack of senior management support
|
·
Centralized data management and governance
|
|
Large number of business needs
|
·
IT and business collaboration
·
Centralized data management and governance
|
|
Difficulty of changing processes/training staff
|
·
Training, rules, and accountability
·
Centralized data management and governance
|
|
Limited resources to deploy manage, or improve
systems
|
·
Some challenges will always be present, but
this one might be helped by the best practices of:
1. IT
and business collaboration 2. Centralized
data management and governance
|
|
Rule and processes can prevent good decisions and
slow down the process of making decisions
|
·
Plan for continuous improvement
·
Make data and information available
|
|
IM has often meant deploying new technology,
which has a poor track record
|
·
IT and business collaboration
·
Enterprise-wide data use
|
|
IM systems are often custom built for a single
purpose
|
·
Plan and design at the enterprise level
·
Enterprise-wide reuse, Create a taxonomy
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