Decision-driven Information Management

You enter the office, thinking what expecting you during the day, taking your time before you get to your desk and you know why. You nervously login into your email application and find out that you have 651 emails to read! and all you wanted is to have a short vacation with your wife and the kids... In the information age, we sometimes challenged with having too much information and limited capacity to handle it. But how can we make sure that we consume or produce only relevant information?

In a business environment, information is only relevant if it supports taking decisions. Why is that? workers has their responsibilities and personal objectives they should achieve (e.g. achieve 20% market share). They do it by taking decisions (e.g. buy/build decision). In order to take good decisions, they need good information (e.g. how much it will cost the company to build a new product). Thus, generated information must be driven from business decisions needs.

To have an efficient decision making process, we need to focus on relevant information. In the industrial age, we produced physical goods (outputs) out of raw materials (inputs); we considered this process to be efficient if, “a given quantity of outputs cannot be produced with any less inputs”, according to Wikipedia. Similarly, in the information age, we make decisions (outputs) based on given information (inputs), and focusing on good information will promise efficient and productive decision making process.

So what makes information relevant? First, as mentioned above, it must be relevant and driven from decision making needs; if the information does not support taking the decision, than it is redundant. It also must be complete with enough details but no more than needed. The information also must be accurate in a satisfying manner. Finally, it is better that the information will be simply represented so it can easily be consumed by others.

Managing information with a decision-driven way-of-thinking can be clarified by revisiting the way corporates analyze their Competition Landscape. Usually what happens is that they research every aspect of the competitive landscape (holding a full-time geographer for that...) – from distinctive competence to SWOT analysis, from product lines to customer base, etc.. Is all the explored information support decisions that should be taken? probably not. Instead, they should retrieve information which is required for specific decisions, e.g. In which market segment I can play the leader? Which of my competencies is perceived as unique and I should focus on?

Next time you get or generate information, ask yourself if it support a decision you or one of your colleagues need to take. If the answer is no, you can throw it away.

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Revisiting business process boundaries

Business Processes Management (BPM) is, according to Wikipedia, "aligning organizations with the wants and needs of clients". To achieve the required alignment, an organization iteratively design and model a process which addresses client needs, then process participants (i.e. IT systems and/or people) execute and monitor the defined process, and finally the organization optimize the process for better alignment.

Managing business processes with BPM systems is become more and more common. The BPM systems market has more than 30% annual growth, according to IDC. The benefits are clear: automation (at least partial), increased operational efficiency, reduced costs and higher transparency for different process stakeholders (process participants and managers).

Today, the common usage of BPM systems is managing processes within the boundaries of the organization, involving only inter-organizational process participants (i.e. organization IT or employees). A good example is a telephone company internal process which handles a technical problem of a customer; customer service opens a case, customer information is retrieved from database, technical staff handles the problem and close the case.

However, business process may involve external participants as customers or business partners. In the above example, the customer (the one the process is for...) is an important stakeholder of this process. The customer may need to supply additional information after initial research by the technical staff, or would like to monitor the case status.

When the process involves external participants, the required alignment is extended beyond the boundaries of the organization. This insight requires an holistic approach to business process management - where all process stakeholders - internal and external, take part. The process execution will be more efficient and take less time, thus reduce costs involved throughout the supply chain. Customer satisfaction will increase due to efficient and transparent service. One example for this approach is the increasing buzz around the integration of CRM and BPM capabilities.

If your organization operates in a competitive environment, with high sensitivity to customer satisfaction or to integration with business partners, it should start identify business processes with high impact on growth and manage them in a more holistic manner.

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