Information Management Best Practice - Software Innovation

Information Management Best Practice Version November 2014

This white paper is intended to help people who are new to Information Management, and who want to get more value from the information they have in their business. It provides simple pragmatic advice, based on Software Innovation’s 30 years of experience.

Software Innovation ▪ www.software-innovation.com

Contents 1

What is information management (IM)? .......................................................................................... 3

2

Why is IM important?........................................................................................................................... 3 2.1

Waste ..............................................................................................................................................................................3

2.2

Underperformance ....................................................................................................................................................3

2.3

Risk ..................................................................................................................................................................................4

3

Your IM ambition .................................................................................................................................. 4

4

Improving IM in your business ........................................................................................................... 4 4.1

Decide scope ...............................................................................................................................................................5

4.2

Set goals ........................................................................................................................................................................6

4.3

Get organized .............................................................................................................................................................6

4.4

Identify top priority IM changes ..........................................................................................................................7

4.4.1

Pain: “We have no agreed way to organize information; people just do their own thing.” ...7

4.4.2 Pain: “I waste time looking for information or checking whether a document is the latest version.” ....................................................................................................................................................................................8 4.4.3 Pain: “I don’t know who has access to what information: probably some of the wrong people, and not all of the right people.” .....................................................................................................................9 4.4.4 Pain: “People store business information “out of sight” on their own devices and in their own accounts on consumer services like Dropbox.” ..............................................................................................9 4.4.5 4.5 5

In summary .......................................................................................................................................................... 10 Implement and check results ............................................................................................................................. 10

Further reading ................................................................................................................................... 11 5.1

Customer stories ..................................................................................................................................................... 11

5.2

AIIM .............................................................................................................................................................................. 11

5.3

Software Innovation white papers ................................................................................................................... 11

© Software Innovation 2014

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1 What is information management (IM)? From Wikipedia:

“Information management entails organizing, retrieving, acquiring, securing and maintaining information.” Information can have several types of value, including: 

business value – e.g. product specifications that give you competitive advantage



legal value – e.g. the contractual terms of a customer relationship



compliance value – e.g. policies to ensure adequate data privacy

Business information is a corporate asset, and should be managed as such – with IM controls and policies relevant for its importance. This “corporate asset” understanding is fundamental for IM success in any business. And to get most value from information, it must be made available and shared with the right people inside and outside your team or company. IM is not primarily about technologies or products – policies, information structures etc. are often more important. Once they are in place or in progress, you can focus on choosing the right IM tool.

2 Why is IM important? Good business demands good information. If the right people don’t have the right information at the right time, business performance will suffer through bad decisions, late decisions, wasted time, or increased risk. If IM is not working well in your business, you will see some of these signs:

2.1 Waste There is no agreed way to organize information; people just do their own thing, so it’s hard to find and share information. You waste time looking in different places for information and checking whether a document is the latest version. IM is hard and gets in the way of your work; it’s difficult to store and find information as you do your core tasks.

2.2 Underperformance You get little value from reusing and sharing knowledge. Collaboration inside and outside the business is difficult.


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You delay actions and make bad decisions because you can’t get information when and where you need it. Your “corporate memory” is poor – knowledge leaves the business when people move on, reducing your competitiveness.

2.3 Risk You don’t know who has access to information: probably some of the wrong people, and not all of the right people. You depend entirely on particular people to get access to critical information People store business information “out of sight” on their own devices and in their own accounts on consumer services like Dropbox. You’re not sure whether your information is backed up and resilient to all reasonable threats. It’s hard to comply with regulatory requirements e.g. for handling of personal data. You cannot demonstrate to customers, suppliers and partners that their information is safe with you.

3 Your IM ambition A positive IM impact on efficiency and risk needs focus and effort. There is no one “right” approach to IM for a business – it depends on the situation. And you may choose different IM approaches for different types of information. Consider the waste, underperformance and risks above. Are they true for your team or business? IM plans should be consistent with your information pain. There’s no need to invest lots of money and management time if it’s not a big issue.

4 Improving IM in your business But if there is significant information pain in your business, you have some IM work to do. Improving IM is best done step-by-step, rather than aiming to change everything quickly. If possible, find ways to improve IM with minimal change to people’s daily work.


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A typical IM project plan might include steps like this: 1.

Decide scope

2.

Set goals

3.

Get organized

4.

Identify top priority IM changes

5.

Implement and check results

6.

Repeat as required

Here are some suggestions for each stage.

4.1 Decide scope First, decide what you want to achieve, and where to focus. To help identify where to start, think about your business in terms of: 

Which processes involve most IM waste and risk?



Which types of document are involved in those processes – and which of them are most important?



Which people, using which tools, are involved in managing those documents today?



Where does information enter and exit your team or your business?

Software Innovation consultants can support you with this analysis. It’s possible to improve IM without major disruption to people’s daily work – for example by choosing a tool that’s deeply integrated with systems that people already use – but some change is inevitable. So think about change management. If you are confident that you can easily manage change, then a “big bang” approach may work – attack the biggest problems first. However, if change may be difficult - for example because people are not convinced - it may be best to start gently with a pilot. IM pilots can deliver fast results with low risk, helping you to learn and to demonstrate success. A pilot should have narrow scope – e.g. a small team that needs to collaborate frequently on a limited quantity of documents.


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4.2 Set goals When you have decided where to focus, next step is to confirm the business goals for your IM project. They depend on the information pains that you have. Setting business goals and measuring progress on them are vital to ensure your IM effort is focused on the right things, and delivers real results. For example, goals may be to: “improve customer satisfaction by 10% through mobile access to contracts for all sales people” or “reduce waste and risk by ensuring latest versions of contracts are always available to everybody. Goal: zero incidents of wrong contracts being used”. Think about how you can measure progress towards these goals.

4.3 Get organized Engage the people you need to involve in the project. IM projects usually affect people’s daily work, so need to be handled carefully. Do you need a formal project manager? Others involved include leaders to ensure the project gets attention and resources, and hands-on people to ensure the details are understood and that things actually change. Focus on getting buy-in from the leaders of teams most affected by the work, and be clear who makes decisions about what – the “governance” for the project. When a new system is part of the IM change, IT people are often involved, although that’s less important with cloud solutions. The level of formality here depends on your situation – a small team working independently can just get on with it, but a bigger project needs more structure. When the team is assembled, reconfirm the scope and goals with them to ensure real buy-in.


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4.4 Identify top priority IM changes Software Innovation meets hundreds of customers each year. Here are some of the most common information pains we hear about, and the relevant IM topics we advise our customers to focus on.

4.4.1 Pain: “We have no agreed way to organize information; people just do their own thing.” Priority: Choose an information structure that works for your business. 360° Online for example has a best-practice data structure that works “out of the box” for most of our customers. Information is tagged as one of six object types:

The objects can be inter-connected in flexible ways to support your business processes. For example a service management process may involve cases, internal and external contacts, documents, and tasks/ activities. You can define a numbering scheme that uniquely identifies each object across the whole enterprise. Objects can also be tagged using pre-defined keywords, again maintained across the business to ensure consistency.

Priority: Make it easy. Users will support the business’ chosen data structure if it’s easy. And with 360° Online it is easy – new objects can be created directly by dragging and dropping emails from Outlook, for example. Software Innovation consultants can advise how best to map your business’ information onto the 360° Online data structure.


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4.4.2 Pain: “I waste time looking for information or checking whether a document is the latest version.” Priority: Create - and use - an information repository. Once you have chosen the right data structure (see above), build your repository of information. Do this by scanning or importing existing documents (quick win, expensive), or by including only new information as it is created or enters the business (slower, riskier, cheaper). Software Innovation can help you define and implement your data migration strategy.

Priority: Make it easy (again). The repository has value only if users adopt it as the best place to store and find information. It’s easy to store information in 360° Online – for example through the 360° toolbar in Microsoft Office applications, which stores information in the repository with a few clicks. Information in 360° Online is also highly “findable” in many ways, which help users: 

Finding information in 360° focused on what the information is, not where it’s stored.



The object model in 360° Online 360° allows you to find information you don’t know exists. For example: You receive a crisis call about a project. You know nothing about the project, and the project manager is on holiday. With 360° you can find all projects connected to the manager, choose the right project, and from there find all contacts working on it with her, and all related documents, tasks etc.



360° Online also has powerful search capabilities – available in Outlook or in the web client which inspect the contents of files as well as the objects they are attached to.



Role-based desktops presents information about a user’s projects, cases, contacts etc. and allows drill down into detail. In this way the most relevant information is easily available



Centrally managed keywords and user-defined hashtags can be added to objects, then searched for, providing yet more ways to find information.

Priority: Right size the repository Build an information store with a scope that fits today’s need, but that can scale. That scope may be the whole enterprise, or currently may be just for a team. With 360° Online you can start with just three users – useful for piloting an IM plan - and scale up indefinitely.


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4.4.3 Pain: “I don’t know who has access to what information: probably some of the wrong people, and not all of the right people.” Priority: Decide who needs what access. Control over access to information should be simple to maintain but flexible enough for your business. At its most basic, a 360° Online user can define a new object as “private” (for the user only) or “shared” (for others, subject to the object’s access control). In simple cases, just identify users, groups or roles, and map them to 360° data objects, specifying whether they can read, edit or delete.

For more complex situations, 360° Online access rights (who can do what) can be automatically generated for an object depending on up to three of its metadata values. Cases used for HR records will have tight restrictions on access, for example. Priority: Make sure the right people get the information they need To ensure a set of users sees or reviews information, set up workflows or review cycles for a document to provide an audit trail of who reads it and when. 360° Online workflows can be sequential (e.g. for hierarchical review of a document) or parallel (e.g. to ensure circulation). Users are alerted with an activity on their home page and can modify documents during the review process, creating new versions as they do so.

4.4.4 Pain: “People store business information “out of sight” on their own devices and in their own accounts on consumer services like Dropbox.” Priority: Address the cause This is hard to fix, so understand why people are doing it before trying to stop it. Typically it’s because the business’ alternatives do not meet user needs. For example:


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

There is no information repository, so consumer data storage tools meets a need. A modern enterprise-class IM tool like 360° Online provides the best of both worlds – easy to use but secure, managed and visible. 360° Online is hosted in the cloud so is available via a browser from anywhere (depending on the authentication setup).



Users need mobile access to information while out of office, but the business doesn’t support it, so they copy business information onto their phone or tablet. 360° Online has an “eWorker” app (coming soon) which provides fast secure access to a user’s information from iOS devices. eWorker supports two-factor authentication if required

Products like 360° Online help avoid the need or temptation to use consumer tools or unmanaged personal devices for sensitive business data, reducing business risk.

4.4.5 In summary These are examples of IM pains and improvement priorities experienced by our customers. Your IM priorities will depend on your business needs, and information pains. Software Innovation consultants specialize in IM and can efficiently help you prioritize and organize.

4.5 Implement and check results When you have decided what to prioritize, it’s time to act. Most businesses we meet use an IM system like 360° Online to help solve their information pains. An IM system isn’t always essential, and won’t solve your problems unless you have thought about data structures and who needs access to what. But if you have considered those questions – with help from Software Innovation consultants if necessary – then you will understand how an IM tool like 360° Online can help you. Successful customers usually start with a few priority areas, measuring results and managing success, then explore the product and expand its use as they learn. Successful customers also focus on user skills, so staff can manage information and use the system with pleasure and confidence. 360° Online is easy to learn, especially when used through Outlook and Office. And Software Innovation provides free e-learning videos so users can refresh their skills and keep up to date.


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Software Innovation can partner your business through its journey of IM improvement: analysis and prioritization, project management, initial use of 360° Online, benefit realization, then rollout – all to make information your business’ most valuable asset.

5 Further reading 5.1 Customer stories Customer stories show how Software Innovation and 360° have helped some real customers with IM: Aspelin Ramm property http://www.software-innovation.com/en/customers/pages/aspelinrammproperty.aspx Østfold Ernergy http://www.software-innovation.com/en/customers/pages/oestfoldenergi.aspx Sparebanken Syd http://www.software-innovation.com/en/customers/pages/SparbankenSyd.aspx Western Norway Savings Bank http://www.software-innovation.com/en/customers/pages/westernnorwaysavingsbank.aspx

5.2 AIIM The Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM) provides useful IM material at www.aiim.org. Membership required for some pages.

5.3 Software Innovation white papers More information, including white papers about 360° Online and data security, is available at www.business360online.com


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