Information Management: Strategies for Gaining a Competitive Advantage with Data (2014)

Preface

Welcome to ground zero of the information age. Increasingly advanced levels of information are permeating every company, every job, every day. Companies are fine-tuning their businesses to degrees never before possible. Companies are allocating resourcesselectively to customers, products and processes. This is all a result of using information under management.

The analysis of data allows businesses to forecast market trends, consumer spending and purchasing. How we mine the data for use is an important subject that every savvy manager wants to know. Sometimes it’s merely about connecting the dots that savvy managers want to know how to do.

Every time I make a purchase on Amazon, I receive suggestions of other products that I might like as well. If I make an addition purchase based on the recommendation—that’s a return on investment. That’s an example of the business of information.

Social networks interface with other data sources to present opportunities for consumers to sign-up for a variety of events. As consumers make selections based on choices, the information is collected for other opportunities to leverage it.

While human judgment remains vital, the nature of business judgment is changing. It must grow to utilize more information and it must utilize that information more deeply. No matter what business you are in, you are in the business of information. Most other competitive differentiators are expected in business, but it is the way a business utilizes its information today that will set it apart.

Businesses need more information, cleaner information, more well-performing information and more accessible information than their competitors to survive and thrive. And, as Chapters 10, 11 and 12 will attest, the competitive battlefield is quickly moving from traditional, alphanumeric data to “big data” and everything it brings.

All of that data needs to come from somewhere. This is not a problem as many companies are swimming in data. There is also an enormous amount of valuable external, third-party data available. If you open up to all relevant social data, fine readings of your sensor devices and all discrete movements of browsers on your websites – all the so-called “big data” – the body of data available to each company is mind-boggling. The data has to go somewhere too, and that can be challenging.

Information – the value associated with data – can be yet another story. Information should have all of the characteristics of comprehensive, clean (defined in Chapter 4), accessible and well-performing. Information is data under management that can be utilized by the company to achieve goals. Bridging that divide to solve problems you currently face is where this book comes in.

I’m a believer in the big data movement and how businesses need to capture and exploit it. Big data is just another form of data. All companies are still grappling with “non-big” (small?) data. This data has been growing too and it’s vitally important for companies. This book is about turning ALL data into information.

It’s not just about “Big Data” by any stretch.

Starting in Chapter 2, each chapter will have a QR code at the end of the chapter which links to some additional information on the topic. In the e-book, these will be direct hyperlinks. These are links I want you to know about, and they will change over time as the subject evolves. Use your favorite QR Reader app to scan or perhaps the built-in mobile cameras of the future that will have a QR scanner.

Each chapter ends with an Action Plan, which summarizes the main take-aways of the chapter and are items to be placed in your work queue.

For Companion book site information, please visit www.informationmangementguide.com.