Treating Information as an Asset

Our world is becoming more and more data rich. Information is abundant which means having the right information on hand is essential if your organisation is to service its customers or perform its function in an efficient manner. Think about the last time your department had to run a time sensitive Official Information Act request or respond to a complex customer enquiry. How successful was it?

In today’s competitive environment, every organisation (both private and public) needs to acknowledge that the management of information within their organisation can facilitate significant improvements in performance and operational efficiency as well as provide a potential source of sustainable competitive advantage. Information is beginning to be recognised as a valuable organisational asset in just the same way plant and property are. All too often organisations have a fragmented approach to information management. Data is duplicated in many places and users are expected to enter the same information into many systems.

Developing a robust Information Management Strategy (IMS) will provide your organisation with a clear direction for implementing effective Information management processes. It should also form the foundation that should be in place before considering cost justifying or implementing an Electronic Document Records Management System (EDRMS).

What is an Information Management Strategy?

An IMS provides a structure for co-ordinating and developing value-based solutions that enable the acquisition and storage, use, sharing, and creation of organisational information assets to strategically and tactically meet the organisation's needs of innovation, capacity for change and to inform decision-making in partnership with business strategies.

The IMS should address issues which the whole organisation has to tackle and to which individual and administrative services must contribute. Critically, it must address the business needs of the organisation.

An IMS is different to an Information Systems Strategic Plan (ISSP) in that the focus is not on specific information systems within an organisation, but on how information can be captured, managed and communicated effectively and efficiently throughout the organisation An IMS should also address common issues and solutions within departments. Many ISSPs may have a section that discusses Information Management. The important consideration is that your organisation has a clearly documented strategy for Information Management.

Steps in implementing an IMS

How do you go about constructing an IMS?

Current State Analysis – where is the organisation now?

Asking your key staff or stakeholders challenging questions will enable you to develop an understanding of your issues. This process can best be analysed through surveys, interviews and workshops with staff investigating the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to good information management (SWOT) within your organisation.

• What are the main information management problems within the organisation?
• What information collaboration issues exist in your organisation and what silos exist?
• How easy is it to locate information and how easy is to share that information?
• Who owns the information?
• What business drivers impact on information sharing and retention?

From this you can create a capability profile and an information needs assessment.

Future state analysis - what does good information management look like?

How will sound information management solve the business problems? Firstly you need to tell the story of your ideal state. A good strategy, for example, is to link your goals to business drivers and organisational outcomes including HR and ICT strategies

The success of your IMS will be aided by having a strong business sponsor and good organisational backing to support the changes that you wish to implement.

Aim to provide information repositories that can be accessed effectively across departmental boundaries.

Statements demonstrating your organisation’s ideal state may include:

• The organisation will be respected by the public
• Employees will be committed to information management excellence
• Information will have a central repository such as EDRMS or Intranet to share and collaborate
• Enhanced information management will enable the organisation to be truly customer/client focused
• No crisis would prove too difficult
• Reporting is effortless
• The organisation’s culture is to be open and to share information unless there is a good reason not to do so
• Employees know there is an IMS and how they fit into the big picture

Gap analysis

Conducting a gap analysis exercise will enable you to understand what the organisation is missing.

What are your business intelligence requirements? What skills are required in the organisation? What skills are required in the information management team? These may include: business analysis, database analysis, social media, process modelling, technology roadmaps and good leadership.

Getting to the future state

Describe the specific actions that will be taken to get to where you want to be. Ideally aim to cover the three elements of:

• People: how will you motivate people and realign your organisational culture to an information-friendly one?
• Process: what specific information management tools and processes will you use?
• Technology: how will you develop the supporting technological infrastructure?

Think about capturing versus connecting: in other words, do you want to focus on collecting information or on connecting people with people? This need not be an ‘either/or’ decision and most IMS’s tend to involve a combination of the two.

Balance long-term vision with quick wins: pick a few core quick win activities where you can make a difference, and prioritise these. Quick win activities can be activities that are easy to plan and implement but will contribute to a positive information-sharing environment (for example monthly meetings to discuss a country office programme or present lessons learned). At the same time, keep your long-term vision in view.

Build the evidence with pilots: pilots allow you to test an approach with a small group of users to find what works and what doesn’t, and to refine your approach.

A well constructed IMS will benefit your organisation in the long term. Treating information as an asset will enrich your organisation with a strong collaborative information sharing culture and provide a solid platform to build on for the future