Byte Idea – Sun Microsystems, Cisco,
There are six critical components: information strategy, information politics, information behaviour and culture, information staff, information processes and information architecture.
These components are discussed below.
Information Strategy
Creating an organizational information strategy (Griffi n, 2000) revolves around the question
‘what do we want to do with information in this organization?’ and must involve senior management (Distefano, 2000). It should encapsulate a set of attitudes in which any information that should be available for sharing (and most will be) is well defi ned and appropriately accessible (allowing for necessary safeguards); where the quality of information is fi t for its purpose (e.g. accuracy, currency, consistency, completeness – but only as far as necessary);
and where all staff know, and exercise, their responsibilities towards information. Information strategies are likely to change and will require revision.
Information Politics
Information politics is about the power that information provides and the governance responsibilities for its management and use. Information management can be used to distribute power or to concentrate it and it is a choice issue based around many factors such as organization size, major business and organizational structure. Thus information is affected all day, every day, by power, politics and economics. However, the politics of information remains a subject that is not likely to be discussed in great detail despite its importance, because of the covert nature of power acquisition and maintenance based around information – a dynamic that would be seriously threatened if it were made more transparent.
In terms of managing information politics, there are some key areas that Strassman (1995) suggested can be addressed to reduce the opportunity for covert power gain:
1. Link business and information technology plans – it is extremely important that the organizational business goals drive the information technology, information system, information architecture and information management planning processes. By making the plans widely available throughout the organization, the process becomes transparent.
2. Defi ne information management goals – understand how to defi ne the goals and principles of information management particularly in relation to the use of standards as a balance between rigidity and chaos.
3. Promote information sharing – the need to encourage information sharing within the organization is important. Changing existing cultures which may actually facilitate
‘information hoarding’ (see below) is a diffi cult task but must be addressed for a successful business-focused information management culture to be attained.
4. Organize for information security – this also encompasses dealing with the issue of privacy of personal information on personal computers. A good security structure facilitates information accountability measures.
5. Manage organizational knowledge – knowledge has a tendency to ‘walk out of the door’
when people leave. Recognize the need to preserve organizational knowledge and promote information management as a core competency of the business. This approach is only now being recognized as truly important for ongoing sustainable competitive advantage of an organization.
Information Behaviour and Culture
Information behaviour and culture are quite probably themost important factors in creating a successful information environment and are tightly intertwined. Information behaviour is associated with how individuals handle information – how they search for it, use it, modify it, share it, hoard it or ignore it. According to Davenport (1997), behaviours that should be encouraged include:
• Information sharing – as opposed to information hoarding. This should be voluntary to maintain people’s trust and goodwill.
• Handling overload – the extent and complexity of information content, particularly that available online, requires an emotional engagement of individuals to discern the chaff from the wheat in addition to having physically well structured content, well-managed workfl ow, clear permissions and security practices (Dalton et al., 2001).
• Dealing with multiple meanings – the problem of multiple meanings that can be obtained from information pre-dates computers but the problem has been escalated with their proliferation, the associated jargon and the ready availability of information online from many different sources.
Corporate or information culture is ‘the way we do things around here’. It is the pattern of behaviours and attitudes that express an organization’s orientation to information. It is invisible and formidable and it provides the context in which business is done. Changing how people use information and, ultimately, how they use it to build a supportive information culture, is the pivotal issue in information ecology – and it does not just ‘happen’. Culture is slow, in fact almost impossible, to change. Brooking (1999) outlines a number of knowledge management concepts from which she suggests ‘corporate memories may live forever’, as the most important to remember and understand. This phrase in essence alludes to the tendency that in times of great and speedy environmental/economic change, an organization’s culture may well prevent the organization as a whole from moving forward.
Information Staff
Many people provide and interpret information. Of particular importance organizationally are content specialists such as librarians and market researchers, designers and facilitators of information bases along with technical staff such as programmers, systems analysts and database administrators who maintain and implement the IT infrastructure. There are six broad characteristics of a good information person and these include:
1. A broad business understanding and knowledge of the organization’s structure and function
2. A knowledge about the diverse sources and uses of information in the organization 3. A familiarity and ease with using IT
4. Political savvy as well as the ability to exercise leadership 5. Strong interpersonal skills
6. A strong orientation towards overall business performance, rather than a narrow allegiance to internal functional goals.
The primary goals of information staff include making information meaningful, ensuring
‘clean’, accurate and timely information, ensuring that information is easily accessible, and that the user engages with the information. The primary tasks of information staff involve:
• Pruning information to get rid of extraneous material and to improve the quality of the information
• Adding context to information such as source of the information, previous history surrounding the information
• Enhancing the information style, which is defi ned by wording, emphasis, variation, interactivity
• Choosing the right medium for presentation (e.g. video, overheads, face-to-face, emails).
Information Processes
These defi ne how information work gets done. Ideally information processes involve all activities undertaken by information workers and should be defi ned by the information management strategy, itself aligned with the business plan.
Information Architecture
Information architecture (IA) is a guide to the structure and location of information in the organization. It may be descriptive, such as a map of where things are found in the information environment, or prescriptive, such as a model of the environment.
The Organizational Environment
A company’s information environment is always based in the wider organizational environment which includes the overall business situation, existing technology investment and physical arrangement. The business situation includes a fi rm’s business strategy, business processes, organizational structure/culture and human resources. All these have impact on the information environment, particularly the information strategy (and vice versa).
The investment in technology a business makes will infl uence the information environment and the accessibility of information. Information is best shared when people are in the same space. Studies have shown that physical proximity also increases the frequency of communications, thus the almost ubiquitous presence of desktop computers and laptops connected by local area networks has provided a good infrastructure in most current-day organizations.
However, according to the Gartner Group IT EXPO, Brisbane, (1999) while information management programs perform best when enabled with sophisticated and elegant technology, an emphasis on technology alone will achieve very little towards good information management – indeed it can ‘drive out’ information and limit creative thinking; conversely, the strongest information management culture that is not supported by robust technology will also falter.
The External Environment
A company’s information ecology is affected by external factors, some of which cannot be controlled – for example, new legislation or competitors making sudden moves. However, companies need to interact with, and must have information about, the external environment including the general business market, technology markets and information markets.
• Business markets create the general business conditions for fi rms and thus have an effect on their ability to acquire and manage information and the types of information they need. This includes information on changes in customers, suppliers, business partners, regulators and competitors.
• Technology markets are where available technologies for creating and managing the information world are bought and sold.
• Information markets are where everything from industry trends to mailing lists are bought and sold.
The Information Economy, Information Supply Chain and ‘E’ Enabled Business
The information economy is essentially the global economy that has emerged from the relatively newly acquired ability to access and transfer information from anywhere to anywhere at any time. In Australia, the Commonwealth Government’s vision for the country in the information economy, and a national framework to achieve it, can be found in a policy document called ‘A Strategic Framework for the Information Economy’ which has been coordinated by the National Offi ce of Information Economy (NOIE, 2002). In this document, originally released in January 1999, with the most recent update being in November 2002, the prediction is that the reach and impact of the information economy will grow enormously and that full engagement with this approach will be essential for Australia’s future.
The information economy goes far beyond a simple economic state to encapsulate all aspects of everyday life now and in the future – from government to big business to the home. One of the major changes in this new environment is in the way industries and business organizations are structured and operate (Turner, 2000). As has been emphasized in the early chapters in this book, electronic technologies, particularly the internet, are allowing faster and more effi cient methods of exchanging, transmitting and processing information and of networking. From procurement, product design and manufacturing, through to distribution, marketing and customer relationship management, internet technologies are changing the rules, internally and externally. From basic human resources through to the fi nal cost structure of a product, the business systems profi le is becoming dramatically different.
This capability has given rise to the term information supply chain which contains, according to George Marinos (2005), of PriceWaterhouseCoopers:
the full set of elements – technology-based, process-specifi c and organizational in nature – that are necessary to 1) collect information from discrete processes, 2) transform this information from data into knowledge, and 3) distribute this information effi ciently and in a timely manner to the appropriate data consumers.
In other words the information supply chain has an impact on every aspect of doing business – how, who with, when, where – and thus the basic structures that support those activities. This is discussed in more detail in Chapter 4 in the section on electronically enabling supply chains, but Figure 3.3 below illustrates what the information supply chain is with an example of how it can directly affect business by reducing transaction costs.
Fig. 3.3. The role of the information supply chain in reducing transaction costs Manufacturing Distribution
Product Development
Sales and Marketing R & D
Network Design and Project Management
Company Intranet Lower Cycle Times
Enhanced Existing Channels Develop New Channels
Customer Profiting www.marketing Customer Management Online
A Business’s Internal Transaction Costs
Internet/Extranet
Inputs Lower Purchasing
Costs Reduced
Inventory Holdings eProcurement
eTransactions/
Settlements CUSTOMERS Speedy, Real Time Information, Reduction in Transaction Costs
Internal Information Processing
Production Outputs
SUPPLIERS
A Firm’s External Transaction Costs
Transactions are at the core of any business operation, forming one of the most signifi cant components of business systems and overall costs. All transactions are information based, relying on exchanging, obtaining, using and tracking information throughout their life cycle.
The costs associated with these transactions are fi rmly ingrained in the physical world and most industries are arranged into long and complex value chains, the shapes of which are largely organized by transaction costs.
These value chains are often populated with ‘middlemen’ who prosper by taking a ‘cut’
out of every transaction they organize within their sphere of infl uence. Since the process of changing key suppliers and distributors in the physical world is so lengthy and involved, most buyers and sellers simply live with the cut imposed rather than attempting to economize on transaction costs. On the internet, the capability of a free fl ow of information between anyone means that the transaction costs associated with most forms of commerce can decrease substantially if the scenario is managed appropriately. This does not imply that middlemen have no place in an electronically enabled business environment – many new types of intermediaries will prove quite successful online. The key difference is that these new intermediaries have to fi nd ways to create value for themselves in an environment where certain forms of transaction costs have largely evaporated.
Managing information, information fl ow and information use are thus signifi cant components of running a successful and sustainable electronically enabled business and must be understood and planned for in managing for the future (Shapiro and Varian, 1998).
Portals
Webster’s Dictionary defi nes a portal as a doorway, gate or entrance. More importantly, from an electronically enabled business’s perspective, it is defi ned in the electronic world as an internet, intranet or extranet ‘door’ or single point of access that users pass through to reach sources of information in their various forms – for example, in databases, documents, within a department, in an application or web-based link to other portals or sites. Using this electronic world defi nition, there are two main types of portal:
1. General purpose portals – a single site where users can fi nd links to various information sources or online businesses (e.g. Yahoo)
2. Vertical portals – which provide the same functionality as a general purpose portal but for a very narrow defi ned area of interest such as travel or business decisions.
The software applications associated with current portals have developed signifi cantly in terms of functionality in enabling access to large and complex volumes of content. Three stages of complexity can be seen across the current portal offerings:
Stage 1. Consolidation. In this phase, relatively non-complex functionality is employed with multiple information sources being brought to a single point of access online.
Stage 2. Customization. In this phase, functionality is increased to allow selected information sources to be used based on personal preferences.
Stage 3. Personalization. In this phase, superior functionality is included in the design of the portal so that specifi c information, regardless of source, and which exactly meets a set of personal requirements, can be accessed.
Although some of the larger companies and particularly those that do signifi cant business online have portals that display functionality spanning all three phases, most businesses are still at Stages 1 or 2 in developing their portals. There are a number of different portal market segments which are based on the level of complexity a business is after. These market segments include:
• Information portals. These automate searching, catagorizing, organizing and publishing intranet-based information and enterprise reporting – for example, the Agribusiness Universe portal which focuses on Asia (www.agribusinessuniverse.com/), or Farming UK (www.farminguk.net), and in Australia InFarmation.com – see Byte Idea this chapter.
• Application portals. These are mainly browser front-ends to a software vendor’s own application system such as an enterprise resource planning (ERP) or customer relationship management (CRM) system (Chapter 4). They do not connect heterogeneous systems – for example, Bolthouse Farms, one of the largest suppliers/distributors of carrots in the world, has used Ciber software to develop a front end to their company ERP system (www.ciber.com/services_solutions/).
• Employee portals (business to employee – B2E). These combine ERP and human resource information systems and the goal is to assemble structured, unchanging processes into role-based routines – for example, Syngenta (www.syngenta.com) working with SAP (SAP, 2003).
• Collaborative portals. These facilitate the development of online team rooms, collaborative projects, management, discussion groups and email. A very good example is the AgroWeb Network that has been set up in Central and Eastern Europe (www.agrowebcee.net).
• Expertise portals. These provide access to expert networks and markets – for example, the Indian AgMarkNet (www.agmarknet.com) – and may be powered by software such as Ciber.
• Decision portals. These are knowledge portals which combine information portals, collaborative portals and expertise portals to automate and improve the decision-making cycle – for example, Agri Beef Co. (www.agribeef.com) which is a privately owned diverse agribusiness grounded in the cattle industry in the USA, has implemented ProClarity software to analyse data and provide decision-making information from its mission- critical production systems for custom cattle feeding, feed supplement manufacturing and distribution as well as high-end beef products distribution and packing (DMReview, 2003).