3 tips for better information management
Its one of the most talked about, but perhaps least understood, business challenges facing us now and into the future: Data.
You’ll have heard it described in many ways: big data, information management, document management, data storage; whichever description you use it boils down to how you handle what is an ever increasing stream of information flowing in, out, and around your business.
The speed of information growth is truly frightening. There’s plenty of studies that show data volume is doubling in size every year and is only increasing in pace.
Why do you need to think about it?
Information is lifeblood of many areas of your business. Everything from sales, marketing, and customer service through to warehousing, operations and accounts, is driven today by information. Whether it’s a traditional paper document or electronic information, the data that flows around your business, and more importantly how effectively you manage it, can be the difference between a successful customer experience and a poor one.
There’s no doubt those businesses that can master the way they use information to drive everything they do will have a competitive edge. However I can understand why it still scares a lot of businesses; it’s a big challenge to tackle. Despite this, I still see a lot businesses relying on manual, labour intensive, paper-based processes.
Whether it’s a fear of the unknown or simply not knowing where to start, the better you can manage information, the higher your productivity and efficiency will be. Here’s three tips I think will help you face the challenge.
-
Work out what’s relevant
Remember: the amount of information available to us is increasing at a rapid rate of knots. This doesn’t mean that all that information is relevant or important to your success.
Having strong business rules about how and what information you collect is the first step in tackling this head on. Think about what information is crucial and make sure that it is easily accessible at right time to right people in your organisation.
Think of your data as a rubric’s cube, with each side representing a data category and each square a data field. For example, one side will be customer information, another will be product information, sales information and so on. Thinking in these terms will allow you to slice and dice the data across the various dimensions to gain better insights into your business performance.
-
Work about how you classify data
Once you’ve worked out what’s important, the next step is making sure it’s readily available to your team when you need it. The best way to do that is to manage how you actually tag the information you’re collecting. Classifying information as it comes in and applying indexes to it is vital to your ability to use it effectively.
The tags you attach to your data enable you to pull information back when you need it. It’s what makes it easier for your employees to find what they need quickly rather than wading through your data for hours trying to find what they need. Being rigorous in the application of your indexing policy will help maintain data integrity.
-
Automate how you use information
One of the great benefits of technology is its ability to automate manual, labour intensive tasks. Once you’ve worked out what’s important and how to best classify it, automation is the next step to really unlocking your business information’s potential. There’s no limit to what you can do: If it’s a process that is manual today, chances are you can easily automate it and remove a number of those steps entirely.
My personal favourite is when you combine automation with mobility. Its mobility that’s given us the tools to take our information with us, but its automation that connects it all together. Pushing information to wherever you’re working when you need it is a revolution we can all take advantage of.