If we think about it, there is a lot of information that is used every day in your business. Where does it come from? How does it get where it needs to be – and – when it needs to be there? One way to look at this problem is to find a similar pattern in our everyday world that can help us relate to the issue. Let’s meet Rob and Bob:
Rob is getting ready for work. Rob has compiled a large report that he needs to present at the office this morning. Rob leaves his house and begins driving to work in his car. Rob is stuck in slow traffic moving along the city streets, which is due to a School bus that is picking up children along its route.
Rob makes his way onto the highway fifteen minutes late and begins his trek towards the office. Twenty minutes into his trip, he encounters a traffic jam. There is a major wreck, which has stopped traffic dead in its tracks. Rob sits in his car stewing until the traffic jam is cleared away. He arrives at the office three hours late and misses his ability to present his report to the business. Without Rob’s information, the business made decisions based upon Rob’s previous report – making some safe assumptions, which unfortunately were grossly understated. This negatively impacted the business as well as the loss of Rob’s three successive quarterly bonus checks!
Now let’s meet Bob:
Bob is getting ready for work. Bob has compiled a large report that he needs to present at the office this morning. As Bob leaves his house, he receives a notification that the local School bus is nearby and it is causing delays. Bob begins driving to work in his car, but selects an alternate route to the highway.
Bob arrives at the highway on time and begins his trek towards the office. Within minutes into his trip, he is notified of a traffic accident several miles ahead, so he takes an alternate route to bypass the accident. He arrives at the office with time to spare and presents his report to the business. The business decides to make the necessary critical adjustments based upon the information provided in Bob’s report. This positively impacted the company’s bottom line – as well as gains in Bob’s three successive quarterly bonus checks!
Bob was assisted by technology solutions that allowed him to adjust to conditions that would have negatively impacted his ability to get to work on time. So what does this have to do with Information management?
Think of Bob’s house as your ERP business system. Bob’s car is the “carrier” of the information (Bob’s report) that needs to arrive at the office (a Decision Support System) that will be used to make crucial business decisions. The highway and the city streets are how the “carrier” of the information travels along towards it destination.
If we keep looking at our analogy to your business systems, you can begin to see many things that can go wrong in this situation – the highways can get clogged (Too much message volume), the car can break down (disruption between systems), Bob can spill coffee on his report – smearing the text and making it unreadable (garbage data), and the list goes on.
This is only one example of Information Management. There are many others. By looking at this holistic view of how information moves through your business, we can begin to address larger issues and opportunities that are often unseen due to the departmental or silo approach towards managing business issues. This approach towards Information Management is what makes StoneDonut’s service offerings unique.
Not only do we address the challenges that businesses encounter when moving information in and out of their organization, we also uncover opportunities to utilize information in ways they never thought possible. Contact us for more information on how we can help you reach your information potential.
