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Archive for the ‘Information Management’ Category

We live in an age where information accumulates all around us in seemingly limitless quantities. As individuals we send or receive emails, text messages, photos and sound bytes on an hour-to-hour basis. As corporations, we cram computer hard drives with statistics, contacts, financial transactions, specifications, technical drawings, instructional materials, and employee and customer data. It’s just as well that our technological capability to store information electronically has improved beyond all expectation.

But despite our technological ability to store information there is still so much that simply disappears on a day-to-day basis. Business owners and managers know the cost when an experienced and valuable employee moves on to a new job. It’s often a mad scramble to capture their knowledge and organise an information handover to the new employee. As technologically advanced we may be, you cannot just backup the employee’s brain to a computer hard drive as they leave. It’s likely you’ll soon be a victim of a variation of Murphy’s Law – the information you most need is the information you don’t have!

The continuous cycle of employees joining and leaving, at whatever level, can be a major impediment to organisation learning and the continuous improvement process. Employees are mostly concerned with the here and now rather than leaving trails of information that may benefit their successors. The management of knowledge and information within a business needs a continuous improvement process itself. Although business owners and managers may strive hard to implement, update and ensure the continuity of work systems and processes, there is still a need to foster an organisation culture that promotes the importance of spending time and energy capturing and preserving information and knowledge on a daily basis.

In any work situation, there are always employees that perpetually seek the assistance of colleagues when they need information. They rely on others to be the ‘keepers of knowledge’. They are full of praise when the information is forthcoming and they curse ‘the system’ if information cannot be found. They take little responsibility themselves to contribute to the organisation’s efforts in information management, it’s someone else’s job. At home, they probably have countless thousands of photos, some of them precious, sitting on an aging hard drive that has never been backed up.

Likewise, there are always some employees that seem to be the givers and perpetrators of information. They seem to have an uncanny knack of finding information when asked, or some 6th sense in knowing what information must be kept. But having special powers is not their reality, it’s more a case of good habits and an appreciation of the need to spend time on a daily basis collecting, updating and managing information.

The difference between people’s inclination to manage information is a consequence of training, life experience and human nature. Some people just don’t get the need to do something now if it can be left until tomorrow, or next week. For many people, taking time to store and organise information falls into this category. On any day inside any business, there is likely to be some failure to appropriately store information. While each failure may be relatively insignificant, cumulatively the effect can be considerable, even damaging to the business.

Risk management is one of the most important parts of any business activity. Risk management is the assessment of risks related to a product, managerial decision, or any other company policy. It is an important aspect as it familiarizes the faculty with probable risks and also helps put up a backup plan in case of failure and worst case scenario conditions. Risks can be incurred from instability in various fields like finance, marketing, credit, legal issues and also from natural disasters, accidents attack from competitor or adversary etc. Risk management involves avoiding the activities that will lead to a risk or threatening condition and if a threat does occur then having a mechanism in place to deal with it.

Risk management is a simple process if done in a proper manner. It usually comes into play after the development phase of a project or before designing of a new project. There are a few simple pointers one must remember to put up a risk management plan. First of all identify the areas where risk can occur. Then identify the risk. Determine what losses will occur if risk does actually take place. Formulate a plan to ensure that all the processes and activities in the company are carried out in such a way that minimum risk is involved. But sometimes you cannot ensure that risk will not occur like in case of human error or natural disasters. For such cases formulate a risk detection and recovery plan. For new products consider product liabilities and risks involved with the product.

Though no matter how much planning is done only experience can help avoid risks. So regular meetings and discussions must be carried out for up-gradation and re-fabrication of risk management plan. For financial risk management the market should be studied regularly and proper investments and research should be done. Whenever making a decision on company policy or launching a new product all legal liabilities must be considered. It is a must to take human error into consideration. Human error cannot be predicted and hence risk assessment in such cases becomes difficult. But still every possible error should be considered as far as possible and a plan for risk management and recovery must be formulated. This can involve easy undo options or double check mechanism for critical process, auto save on unexpected shutdown etc.

One of the major risk conditions occurs during a natural disaster. Though they don’t occur that often they are the most dangerous in terms of risk for any organization. A company has loads and loads of date stored in databases of different types. This data contains important information like customer records, employee records, sales information, product information, management policies etc. A natural disaster like earthquake, volcano eruption or tornado can destroy these databases and make the company lose all its vital and sensitive information gathered from years of research. To avoid this strong and effective risk management plans for natural calamities must be formulated. Such a risk management plan involves making of duplicate databases with all sensitive information and storing them as backups in some other safe location. Also in case of failure of system these databases can be used to continue operation of critical processes.

Risk management is of great importance in any company policy and must be strongly implemented to ensure optimized working of the organization.

During “office hours” when there are no changes in your organization, the relevance of knowledge management is minimal. Imagine that your business is involved in selling bikes and this business is prosperous. But than, all of a sudden there is a fall in demand. You verify with the suppliers of the motors and indeed in other areas the demand declines. You are just selling them, and you need to decide what to do.

You need information to understand the cause of the decline in demand. After you have done this, you will find out — in this case — that because of the increase of the oil-price, the demand for bicycles has been increasing other the last months. This explains the decline in your sales.

Because of the same information you may also decide to step into the bicycle business. This should solve your problem you think and it will, although the competition is fierce. But that’s not the point.
The point is — knowledge management. What do you need to know to manage your business?
Again you need to gather a lot of information about this new market, about the potential clients, information about buying bicycles from the various (new) suppliers. It is all what you should be able to manage. Information management.

Yet, your business will not automatically take of in this new setting. You need experience. “How is the bicycle selling process different?” How do you buy bicycles, from what kind of suppliers, how do you know about quality. A lot of issues that you could translate from the other business. Yet there are also many elements you will not know about (in advance). You have to experience them, these can not be planned, because you do not know them. And in this case your business has made no real transformation. The profile is very much the same. From selling bikes to bicycles. Knowledge management would really be an issue if you switch from selling bikes to trading stocks.

A way to handle this knowledge problem is to contract someone who is experienced in — who knows about — selling bicycles. This is a common solution.

Information management makes you decide to get into this new business.
Knowledge management will determine whether you survive in this business you do not know.