"Document Management: Assessing costs and Benefits" - Gartner Research

Gartner has published in 2000 a research by Debra Logan, where you can find information about the ROI in Document Management. Despite the eleven years that passed by, most of the conclusion are still true and must taken in account. 

Debra claims that “Investment in DM will typically pay itself within two or three years. Information “hyper flow” is making this outlay almost mandatory for many document-intensive enterprises. Here is the case for cost-justifying the investment”.

Nowadays, almost any company is document-intensive, we create documents in many context for many proposes. We are called the Knowledge Workers, because we use knowledge and most of all we produce knowledge. How to capture knowledge? One of many ways is to write it down… in documents.

Debra proposes a reflection about the 10 ways of wasting time and money with documents, such as

•    “documents are hard to find” ( especially when you are not the one who wrote it down
• “document are hard to share” ( am I really looking to the last version? “ )

 In the end of this research, Debra defines a checklist for determine the “Maximum ROI from IDM” (Integrate Document Management):

•  Volume of documentation
•  Rate of increase
•  How documents are created
•  How documents are delivered Number of people that will access, edit, view
• Compliance and Quality assurance that document will be need
•  Business Value of the document
•  Document´s Workflows requirements
•  How documents will be used in business process

If you have questions about investing or not in Document Management, that a look in this research and take out the previous checklist in order to understand the importance of Documents in your organization. You can’t dream about how much you will save, if you invest in Document Management.

Information Manager - Skills

The Information Manager's main skills are:

     * Determine the information needs
     * Defining keeping policies
     * Defining Information Architecture ( structures and organizational schemes)
     * Enhance information´s  access / communication 
     * Provide services and technology suitable for information retrieval (creating metadata frameworks)
     * Set policies for the information disposal
     * Set policies for preservation and conservation

Briefly, the Information Manager has the primary responsibility for managing Corporate Information System´s . Thus, he necessarily needs skills in all phases of the life cycle of information.

Information Quality - why?

The information is being increasingly recognized as an economic resource, essential to decision making and business processes management.

Given the increasing importance in organizations and in society itself, it is natural  to accept concerns about information quality. In fact, an incorrect or outdated information can lead to a wrong decision and then produce a negative impact  on the organization.

A decision maker that is based on outdated or incorrect information will incur certainly in inadequate assumptions and therefore produce ineffective actions.

Moreover, when you assume that information is an organizational asset, it is clear that you need to apply quality control methods similar to those applied to other company resources such as the products. This assumption becomes more critical when the information is the company is actually a product itself, as in the case of organizations that provide market research.

Reflections about:
Olveira, João Nuno; AMARAL, Luís Alfredo - "O papel da qualidade da informação nos sistemas de informação"

Information Management - what for?

Information Management has developed as scientific area with the increasing arise of new Information and Communication Technologies in organizations and public administration.

Nowadays, INFORMATION is POWER, and therefore it is necessary to acquire a growing awareness of the strategic value that it may take. The knowledge imposes itself as an asset for companies wishing to compete in an unstable and ever changing environment. Information management became critical when you suffer from   information overloading. Organizations do realize the need, but only when it carries huge portions. Aren´t we overloaded?

Manage information efficiently creates ... and allows:

     * Efficient Information Services
     * Competitive consuming of external information ( better usage of information from outside)
     * Avoid information duplication, overloading problems and misunderstandings
     * Improving communication and information retrieval
     * Promote the strategic management based on competitive intelligence

Information Managment - What is that?

The Information Management intends to make information resources and informational capacities of the company more efficient, to improve decision making, adaptability and learning in a changing environment.
 

Auster, Ethel; CHOO, Chun Wei
Managing Information for the Competitive Edge. New York, Neal Schuman, 1995

 

Information Management arises from the recognition of information as a strategic resource for the organization.Regarding this recognition, information it must be managed in order to become highly profitable.

Hello world

After writing about Information Management since 2007 in Portuguese, now I decided to get global.

My English is not perfect and maybe you will find a lot of grammar and spelling mistakes... please forgive me for that.  I promise to do my best!

If your are Portuguese or understand Portuguese, maybe you should try the original version of this blog:

•  http://www.gestaoinformacao.blogspot.com

I will try to publish simultaneously  into Portuguese and English, and for now I will be spending some time translating the most popular posts.

Let´s get things done!