People, processes, portals unlock power of information

Information power will only be achieved in those companies that bring together the people and the processes (including the technology) into meaningful views that deliver the right data quickly and effectively. The glue that holds it all together is a corporate philosophy which ensures that information is created, indexed, stored, retrieved and ultimately destroyed at its end of life.

Companies must understand what improvements they hope to achieve - cost, productivity, management - before throwing technology at a problem.

Paul Mullon, Marketing Director of Metrofile

Managed properly, information provides strategic advantage and delivers value. Managed poorly, it merely becomes a massive resource drain, consuming time and negatively affecting the bottom line.

People need to be given the tools to access information, but companies should realise that anything to do with knowledge management and information in a business is not a technology thing.

There are many companies that have installed great knowledge management technology, but they have yet to derive benefit. Other companies buy merely adequate technology, yet they achieve amazing benefits. The reason is that knowledge management is about people.

A culture should be entrenched in companies that protects, shares and enriches information. The whole company, from the CEO down, must have the mindset to extract information and use it effectively. There must also be collaboration between people, a willingness to share and actual sharing of data. People must not protect their knowledge and hold on to what they have. They must shake off the perceived threat that if they share their information they will lose their power.

Companies need to look at what information is meaningful to the business. That information must follow a strategy. For example, the customer service strategy, which is vitally important to the longevity of a business, must lead to what information needs to be kept about the customer, what needs to be given back to them, and in what format they want to see the information.

Processes need to be created to optimise the flow of information, reduce costs and improve productivity, and also to ensure that the right information is made available to the right people at the right time.

Imaging systems and workflow give companies the ability to move electronic images around in those processes, which has to add value. Workflow ensures all steps in the process are completed, nothing falls through the cracks and the job is done on time.

There is, however, a caveat. Technology is just an enabler. If it simply speeds up or creates greater volumes of a bad process, it is not helping.

Companies must understand what improvements they hope to achieve - cost, productivity, management - before throwing technology at a problem.

There is also technology available that improves the capture of information in various processes, making it happen faster, cheaper and with fewer errors. Companies must archive data, to satisfy legislation and customer service requirements. Some documents might need to be kept for a long time and only retrieved in 100 years` time. Businesses need to reduce the costs of storing that information to a minimum, yet still be able to access the documents. In that case, outsourcing is the right way to go.

On the portal side, portals may an abused word, but information portals will increasingly become single ports of call for employees, customers, suppliers and partners to access. Without access to vital information, businesses simply cannot operate. Portals provide one of the few ways that people can access pertinent information without having to wade through masses of irrelevant information.

However, they must have a defined purpose. A customer and someone within a business want to see very different information, although the employee may want to see the customer`s data as well. Therefore, customisation of portals is very important.

There are many types of portal. For example, an information portal brings together all the aspects mentioned above - information, knowledge, and the documents in the business that are pertinent to decisions that need to be made.

A process portal gives access to workflow, driving applications through the business process. It needs to give users quick access to appropriate information. Information from external suppliers such as credit bureaus and banks, and other data in line of business systems must be accessible from that portal.

There is a lot of talk about knowledge management, extracting information, business intelligence, and how to do all of this effectively. Only those companies that bring together people, processes and technology can achieve that. Having any one of these is not enough.