Information management

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The information management ( IM ) involves the cycle of organizational activity: the acquisition of information from one or more sources, custodial and distribution of such information to those who need it, and its main disposition through archiving or deletion.

The organizational engagement cycle with this information involves a wide range of stakeholders, including those responsible for ensuring the quality, accessibility and usefulness of the information obtained; those responsible for safe storage and disposal; and those who need it for decision-making. Stakeholders may have the right to initiate, change, distribute or delete information in accordance with the organization's information management policy.

Information management covers all generic management concepts, including planning, organizing, structuring, processing, controlling, evaluating and reporting information activities, all of which are necessary to meet their needs with the role or function of an organization that is dependent on information. This generic concept allows information to be presented to an audience or group of the right people. Once the individual is able to use that information, he then gets more value.

Information management is closely related to, and overlapping with, the management of data , systems , technology , process and - where the availability of information is critical to organizational success - strategy . This broad view of information management contrasts with the more traditional previous view, that the life cycle of information management is an operational issue requiring specific procedures, organizational capabilities and standards relating to information as a product or service.

Video Information management

History

Ideas emerging from data management

In the 1970s, information management primarily concerned more closely with what is now called data management: hollow cards, magnetic tapes, and other record storage media, involving the life cycle of such formats that require origination, distribution, backup, maintenance, and disposal.. At this time the enormous potential of information technology is coming to be recognized: for example one chip stores all the books, or electronic mail that moves the message directly across the world, amazing ideas at the time. With the development of information technology and expanding the reach of information systems in the 1980s and 1990s, information management took on a new form. Progressive businesses such as British Petroleum change the vocabulary of what is then "IT management", so that "system analysts" become "business analysts", "monopoly supply" into a mix of "insourcing" and "outsourcing", and large IT functions are transformed into "lean teams "which began enabling some agility in processes that utilize information for business advantage. The scope of senior management interest in information in British Petroleum extends from value creation through enhanced business processes, based on effective information management, enabling the adoption of appropriate information systems (or "applications") operated in the IT infrastructure that has been outsourced. In this way, information management is no longer a simple job that anyone with no other work can do, be very strategic and a concern of senior management. Understanding of the technology involved, the ability to manage information systems and business projects is changing well, and a willingness to harmonize technology and business strategy all becomes necessary.

Management of positioning information in bigger image

In the transitional period leading to a strategic view of information management, Venkatraman (a strong advocate of this transition and transformation process, offers a simple set of ideas that briefly bring data management, information management, and knowledge management together (see figure)) :

• Data managed in the IT infrastructure must be interpreted to generate information.
• The information in our information system must be understood in order to appear as knowledge.
• Knowledge enables managers to make effective decisions .
• An effective decision should lead to appropriate action .
• Appropriate actions are expected to provide meaningful results .

This is often referred to as the MARK model: Data, Information, Knowledge, Action, and Results, provides strong clues about the layers involved in harmonizing technology and organizational strategy, and it can be seen as an important moment in changing attitudes toward information management. Recognition that information management is an investment that must provide meaningful results is important for all modern organizations that rely on information and make good decisions for their success.

Maps Information management

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Theories of behavior and organization

It is generally believed that good information management is critical to the smooth running of the organization, and although no generally accepted information management theory, behavioral and organizational theory helps. Following the theory of behavioral science management, especially developed at Carnegie Mellon University and supported by March and Simon, most of what takes place in modern organizations is actually information handling and decision making. One important factor in information handling and decision-making is the ability of individuals to process information and make decisions based on limitations that may come from the context: one's age, situational complexity, or lack of quality required in the information at hand. - all exacerbated by the advent of new technology and types of systems that are possible, especially when social networking emerges as a phenomenon that businesses can not ignore. However, long before there was general recognition of the importance of information management in organizations, in March and Simon argued that organizations should be regarded as cooperative systems, with high-level information processing and a great need for decision-making at various levels.. Instead of using the "human economy" model, as advocated in classical theory, they propose "administrative man" as an alternative, based on their argument about the cognitive boundaries of rationality. In addition they propose a satisfactory idea, which requires search through the available alternatives until the acceptance threshold is accepted - another idea that still has the currency.

Economic theory

In addition to organizational factors mentioned by March and Simon, there are other issues stemming from the economic and environmental dynamics. There is a cost of collecting and evaluating the information necessary to make a decision, including the time and effort required. Transaction costs associated with the information process can be high. In particular, established organizational rules and procedures can prevent the most appropriate decision making, leading to sub-optimal results. This is a problem that has been presented as a major problem with bureaucratic organizations that lose the economy of strategic change due to deep-rooted attitudes.

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Strategic information management

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According to Carnegie Mellon School, the organizational ability to process information is at the core of organizational and managerial competence, and organizational strategy must be designed to improve information processing capabilities and as an information system that provides the ability to be formal and automated, competencies very bad. tested at various levels. It is recognized that organizations must be able to learn and adapt in ways never before proven and academics begin to organize and publish definitive work on strategic information management, and information systems. At the same time, the idea of ​​business process management and knowledge management despite much of the optimistic initial thinking about the redesign of business processes has been discredited in the information management literature. In the field of strategic studies, it is regarded as the highest priority of understanding the information environment, understood as an aggregate of individuals, organizations, and systems that collect, process, disseminate, or act on information. This environment consists of three interconnected dimensions that continue to interact with individuals, organizations, and systems. These dimensions are physical, information, and cognitive.

Syncing technology and business strategies with information management

Venkatraman has provided a simplistic view of the necessary capabilities of an organization that wants to manage information well - the DIKAR model (see above). He also works with others to understand how technology and business strategies can harmonize appropriately to identify the specific skills needed. This work is paralleled by other authors in the world of consulting, practice, and academia.

Contemporary portfolio model for information

Bytheway has collected and organized basic tools and techniques for information management in one volume. At the heart of his view of information management is a portfolio model that takes into account the growing interest in external information sources and the need to organize unstructured external information making it useful (see figure).

This portfolio of information shows how information can be collected and organized with useful, in four stages:

Stage 1 : Take advantage of public information: recognize and adopt well-structured reference data schemes, such as zip codes, weather data, GPS positioning data and travel schedules, exemplified in personal computing.

Stage 2 : Marking noise on the world wide web: use existing schemes like postal codes and GPS data or more typically by adding "tags", or building a formal ontology that provides structure. Shirky gives an overview of these two approaches.

Stage 3 : Filtering and analyzing: in the wider world, the ontology commonly developed extends to hundreds of entities and hundreds of relationships between them and provides the means to derive meaning from large volumes of data. The structured data in the database works best when the structure reflects a higher level information model - an ontology, or an entity relationship model.

Stage 4 : Setup and archiving: with large volumes of data available from sources such as the social web and from mini-telemetry systems used in personal health management, a new way to archive and then collect data for meaningful information. The method of map reduction, which comes from functional programming, is a newer way of obtaining information from a large archive dataset that becomes attractive to ordinary businesses that have enormous data resources to work with, but requires advanced multi-processor resources.

Competence to manage information well

The Knowledge Information Management Agency was made available on the internet in 2004 and showed that the management competencies needed to gain tangible benefits from investing in information are complex and layered. The framework model that is the basis for understanding competence consists of six "knowledge" areas and four "processes" areas:

Information management knowledge area

IMBOK is based on the argument that there are six areas of management competence required, two of which ("business process management" and "business information management") are closely linked.

• Information technology : The pace of technological change and the pressure to continue getting the latest technology products can undermine the stability of the infrastructure that supports the system, thereby optimizing business processes and delivering benefits. It is important to manage the "supply side" and recognize that technology is increasingly becoming a commodity.
• Information systems : While historical information systems have been developed in-house, over the years it has become possible to acquire most of the software systems the organization requires from the software package industry. However, there is still a potential competitive advantage from applying new system ideas that give to the organization's strategic intentions.
• Business processes and business information : Information systems are applied to business processes to improve them, and they bring data to businesses that become useful as business information. Business process management is still seen as a relatively new idea because it is not universally adopted, and has been difficult in many cases; business information management is even more of a challenge.
• Business benefits : What benefits are we looking for? It needs not only to be truthful about what can be achieved, but also to ensure active management and benefit assessment. Since the advent and popularization of the Balanced Scorecard there has been great interest in business performance management but not much serious effort has been made to link business performance management with the benefits of information technology investment and the introduction of new information systems until the turn of the millennium.
• Business strategy : Although far from being a problem managing information within organizations, strategies in most organizations should only be informed by information technology and information system opportunities, whether to address poor performance or to improve differentiation and competitiveness. Strategic analysis tools such as value chains and critical success factors analysis directly depend on proper attention to information that (or may) be managed

The information management process

Even with his full competence and competence in the six areas of knowledge, he argues that things can still go wrong. The problem lies in the migration of ideas and values ​​of information management from one area of ​​competence to another. Summarize what Bytheway explained in detail (and supported by selected secondary references):

• Project : Information technology is not valued until it is engineered into an information system that meets business needs through sound project management.
• Business changes : The best information systems are successful in delivering benefits through the achievement of changes in the business system, but people do not appreciate the changes that make new demands on their skills in new ways of information systems being done. Contrary to common expectations, there is some evidence that the public sector has been successful with the changing information technology caused by businesses.
• Business operations : With the new system, with business processes and business information upgraded, and with staff finally ready and able to work with new processes, businesses can start working, even as the new system extends far beyond the limit of one business.
• Performance management : Investment is no longer just about financial results, financial success must be balanced with internal efficiency, customer satisfaction, and with organizational learning and development.

Summary

There are always many ways to look at business, and the information management point of view is only one way. It is important to remember that other areas of business activity will also contribute to the strategy - not just the good information management that drives the business forward. Corporate governance, human resource management, product development and marketing all will have an important role to play in a strategic way, and we should not see one domain of activity alone as the only source of strategic success. On the other hand, corporate governance, human resource management, product development and marketing all depend on effective information management, and so in the final analysis of our competence to manage information well, based on the area offered here, it can be said to be dominant.

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Operational information management

Manage necessary changes

Organizations are often confronted with many of the challenges and issues of information management at the operational level, especially when organizational change is generated. The novelty of the new system architecture and the lack of experience with the new style of information management requires a very difficult level of organizational change management to deliver. As a result of the general organization's reluctance to change, to allow for new forms of information management, there may be (for example): lack of necessary resources, failure to recognize new information classes and new procedures that use them, lack of support from senior management causing the loss of strategic vision, and even political maneuvers that undermine the operations of the entire organization. However, the implementation of new forms of information management usually should lead to operational benefits.

Galbraith's early work

In the initial work, taking on the view of information processing from organizational design, Jay Galbraith has identified five tactical areas for increasing information processing capacity and reducing the need for information processing.

• Develop, implement, and monitor all aspects of an organization's "environment".
• Creation of resources is slow so as to reduce the burden on the overall hierarchy of resources and to reduce the processing of information related to overload.
• Create independent tasks with specified constraints and that can achieve proper closure, and with all the resources needed to perform the task.
• The recognition of lateral relationships that pass across functional units, thus moving the decision power to the process rather than breaking it down in the hierarchy.
• Investments in vertical information systems that direct the flow of information for a particular task (or set of tasks) in accordance with the applied business logic.

Organization matrix

The concept of lateral relations leads to a different organizational form of a simple hierarchy, the "matrix organization". It unifies the vertical (hierarchical) view of an organization and the horizontal view (product or project) of work visible to the outside world. The creation of a matrix organization is one of management's responses to the persistence of persistent external demand, avoiding a variety of false responses to episodic demands that tend to be handled individually.

src: ischool.umd.edu

See also

• Knowledge Body Information Management
• Notes management
• Knowledge management
• Information technology
• System information
• Project management
• Business process
• Balanced scorecard
• Strategic management
• Data management
• Content management
• Master in Information Management
• Information Resource Management Journal
• The Journal of Global Information Management

src: mim.umd.edu

References

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External links

• Information Management Paper (Link to downloadable book about "Big data and manage information")
• "Knowledge Management Information Body" (Websites that support IMBOK with material overviews, research reviews, and blogs)
• Application and Library Services Business Information Services (Web site for the information management and systems community based in the Netherlands)

Source of the article : Wikipedia