Information is today’s gold. All information that your business or organization gathers, describes, and interprets is from various sources and must-have information management strategies in order to be of use to your business.
Information comes in many forms like a sheet of paper, a spreadsheet, an electronic file, and anything that brings facts and learnings about something or someone. Over time that you acquire information, there comes a point where there is too much information and you don’t know where to look, leaving you helpless and exerting more effort. This is called “death by data”, and it happens if a company or individual gathering information lets their information run in its own course.
Management
In order to prevent overwhelming information, you must start to think about how to store and proactively use your information as a strategic asset.
The simple explanation of information management is making sure that the right people have the right information at the right time. The information at hand practices general management concepts such as planning, controlling, and execution.
In addition to information management, data management is also an essential component in developing a strategy appropriate for your business. Your data must be first processed, contextualized, tagged, analyzed, and verified in order to provide useful information.
To improve management and information usage within your business, there are certain principles you must consider to support planning, accountability, and effective decision-making, according to the Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation.
Principle # 1 Treat information as a corporate asset.
Because information management strategies make the business more valuable, it requires comprehensive organization, categorization, and good management like any other asset.
Principle # 2 Maximize usage of information
Overlooking can be a grave fault, especially in a business. You might miss trends, potential problems and result in worthless decision-making efforts. By utilizing information and maximizing its potential, you can promote strategic and legitimate decision-making, therefore, maximizing the information’s effectiveness.
Principle # 3 Manage access of information to the appropriate people
Trust in handling information that is owned by the business is important to maintain the company’s integrity. Management of access must be installed in order to prevent misuse of information.
Principle # 4 Sharing of information
If you are a public business or organization, you must abide by the Freedom of Information Act that mandates the disclosure of public documents. Additionally, you must develop protocols that safeguard information security, legislative requirements, and policy decisions and agreements.
Principle # 5 Provide only high-quality, relevant information services
Information management strategies are only useful if they are relevant and trustworthy. Providing bad information can only contribute damage to the business or organization and its clients.
Principle # 6 Create and maintain compliant information management.
Build information management processes that support compliance with legislative requirements and are aligned with the business strategy.
Principle # 7 Prepare for the future while supporting the present
Information management strategies might not be useful now and might be useful later in the future, vice versa. Whatever the case is, storing valuable information can help you prepare for the future while enjoying benefits in the present.
Strategy
Once you have implemented information management, you can then develop a strategy to effectively use your resources and benefit your business. This is called information management strategy and it includes your business’s or organization’s plan to acquire, manage, use, and deliver information through products and services to your customers.
In developing your strategy, you must keep the following information in mind:
- Current status
- Future goals
- Concretely planned steps to achieve your goals
- Plants to acquire new resources
- Processes and policies for interacting with business departments
- Assignment and implementation of respective responsibilities
Why do you need this?
Every business or organization has the need to store information, more so if you are in the digital business. Having a strategy will benefit your business or organization by recognizing opportunities to improve operations through the analysis of information from customers.
For example, if you are a company and enforce better integration with marketing and sales systems to improve customer service and revenue, then you can learn the market value of your data and begin offering new services based on the acquired information – improving your company’s revenue.
Also, using the acquired data and information can be a major source to predict trends and pinpoint problems in the business. Maximizing the benefits of information management can open opportunities and fix problems that you might miss by not utilizing the information you have.
Key Takeaway
As technology, ideas, and businesses are constantly evolving, there are many ways to plan your information management strategy.
Developing a strategic information management plan and its cycle of organizational activities such as data gathering, analyzing, categorizing, contextualizing, archiving and deletion of information will benefit your overall business or organization’s strategy. Using information effectively will influence beneficial decision-making and overall success in your strategy’s execution.
