Is information really treated in the right way in the enterprise? Is there a tendency to gorge on one type of information and the expense of another – and in doing so is the balanced view lost?
An analogy might help to clarify the situation.
People need both food and water to survive. However for healthy living and growth the quality and composition of the meals is important. For most people they want a complete meal – not the unprocessed ingredients, as they may not have the time or skills to prepare it themselves. A well balanced diet has long been recognised as a foundation to good healthy living.
Now consider a company and its need to be "fed" by information. We can consider "structured information", the numbers, like "drink" – you need it regularly and it must be clean and of good quality. A lot of companies do realise the importance of this and have their numbers well under control using tools like ERP and BI.
However let's take the "unstructured information", documents, emails, etc, and consider that as the "food". Again it should be of good quality, clean, well presented and hopefully a pleasure to consume. However when we come to look how some companies serve up their "unstructured information" it is often an unappealing stew.
What is needed is a more balanced approach. It is important that the numbers and the supporting documents are considered as part of the same balanced diet. The content of this diet must contain only good quality ingredients and it must be well prepared and served in an appealing way and should suite the needs of the consumer. A lot of times companies worry about sourcing information and buy expensive content management systems which help people get material on to the Intranet or Portal but not enough effort is placed on the quality and the relevance of it. Indeed just like food – information can go off and be dangerous to health once past its "use by date".
What must be remembered is that busy business people need business information to help them make decisions, not just raw unprepared information. It is this balance of clean well processed information; both structured and unstructured that should be the goal.
All these needs can be encompassed with a well planned balanced approach.
To add to this needed for this balance, compliance requirements mean that companies need to be very open about where information has come from and how it is processed. Just as with food it is important that it is fresh, clean and properly prepared – consider it as "health and safety regulations" for data!
What are the implications?
Companies need to take a more holistic view of what information they have, how it is looked after and served to the right people in the right way. This is not just a question of technology, just like preparing food is not just a question of buying the latest and most expensive cooker. The processes to look after the information and the people its intended for are just as important. Ownership is also needed, the various information needs to be owned and maintained by someone – with a overall information delivery owner guiding the process – in effect an information "chef".
Companies should look to a coherent information management strategy encompassing the handling of structured and unstructured information. They should define and standardise the way it is stored, labelled and handled and must consider all the different users and deliver channels it will use. They should decide what fits where and how it all should be labelled (we are getting hotter on labelling our food – but documents and other vital pieces of information rarely have so much as a meaningful title).
There is also much money to be saved in taking this strategic approach. Use of agreed technologies and processes will improve efficiency; reduce waste and the re-invention of the wheel that is associated with the common piecemeal approach of different parts of the company having their own "solutions".
It should not be left to be handled by local point solutions that are both wasteful and inefficient. Strategic consolidation of the approach to handling information should be seen as the goal. Too much critical intellectual property is lost without such planning.
Information processes need to be tailored to suit the company taking in to account the full information life cycle from creation to archiving and/or destruction. There is a strong need to change the way people handle, store and use information. Such change management is a major component in any information strategy. It is also often thought of as a one off step, this is wrong. Proper information handling and processes need to be part of business as usual. A healthy diet is for life, not just for a few weeks after Christmas.
Napoleon said that an army marches on its stomach, recognising that to be effective, an army needs good and plentiful food. Just as a badly fed army will not fight well – a badly informed company will not compete well.