Information Management Practices for the Future Economy

Going forward, all businesses will need to ensure that they adequately account for each of the “four cornerstones” of business information management in their planning and strategy. By building a strategy that satisfies these broad business requirements, a company will be effectively managing business information while also mitigating risk and controlling internal costs. These cornerstones include: protecting business information; delivering data and documents in a secure manner; collaborating with a distributed workforce and client base; and controlling access to critical business information.

Protect Business Information

Protecting business information can take many forms. One of the most critical forms of protection that is often overlooked by small and medium sized businesses is “business continuity.” Business continuity can be as simple as making sure workers always have access to key documents and data files. Sound practices will include keeping copies in a secure offsite location. Often overlooked as well is the need to take humans out of the mix. People often have the best intentions when it comes to backing up data files but have the worse habits. The result is the potential loss of months or years of information because an individual did not take the time to manually save files to an external drive or move them to a central file server regularly.

Protecting information can also take the form of a “corporate library.” Our public libraries are the keepers of information in our society. The sheer number of companies that don’t have a solid, chronologically managed corporate record of their activities is astounding. This type of corporate library will serve as a collective corporate memory since employees come and go. The libraries’ existence can ensure an easy transition to new management teams from the executive to the departmental level. Corporate libraries must have robust search and retrieval mechanisms and should be easily accessible from remote locations.

Delivering Data and Documents Securely

The need to deliver corporate information in a secure manner has always been important, but it is becoming a legal necessity in many industries. This is especially true in those industries where the management of personal data is involved. The ability to create secure sites on-the-fly so that workers can deliver information securely when they need to is paramount. More importantly, the ability to seamlessly create a virtual work environment that includes different types of people (employees, supervisors, clients, vendors, etc.) will increase command and control through improved transparency while keeping infrastructure costs under control.

Collaborate with a Distributed Workforce

The social networking phenomenon has turned the way businesses market themselves to the public upside down. As social networks such as Facebook have become more popular, businesses see these open networks as channel opportunities to build their brands and sell their products. This networking practice can be easily applied to business applications outside of the marketing departments as well.

Unlike typical “open” social networks, a “closed” business network will apply the same technology to a more limited group of users in a more targeted way. In other words, businesses can create a social network in order to interact for a purpose other than networking. This takes collaboration to the next level. There are many collaboration tools today that will support document sharing or task management. But very few that allow a user group to create a closed network designed specifically to move a business initiative forward. Project management software comes closest in that they all have robust task management, the ability to link documents to project initiatives, calendaring, etc. However, all the features are really designed for IT project managers, resource managers or for building reports for stakeholders. These are not truly collaborative systems in the way that a closed social network could be for business.

Key features of a closed social network would include: calendaring functions that integrate with desktop applications; the ability to invite and disinvite members quickly as necessary to share information and roles change; the ability to integrate with outside content or link to other business applications; the ability to control access to key information and distribute information quickly to a widely distributed group simultaneously, etc.

Controlling Access to Critical Information

Controlling access to information is all important and can either take the form of broadcasting information to a desired audience or preventing a subset of an audience from gaining access to information. Ensuring that gatekeepers have adequate command and control of documents and data will become even more important than it is today. For those businesses that do not have a business intelligence program in place already, implementing technology that offers command and control features will offer an opportunity to decide who gets to have access to what competitive information and can go a long way towards simplifying the dissemination of critical information to clients and workers alike.

Increased Government Oversight to Affect Business Information Management Requirements

Anyone who has been paying attention will be aware that there are bold changes afoot in the way government relates to industry. Whether you approve of the changes or not does not really matter. The changes will affect all businesses either way. Those who do not recognize this will be left behind.

Increased government oversight will take many forms. In some cases it will require businesses to maintain higher standards of transparency. This is especially true of banks and insurance companies. In order for these institutions to satisfy their new requirements, they will be forced to impose new requirements on their customers. So any business that insures itself or its key employees or that borrows money in any form will be affected by these changes directly.

Government oversight may also take the form of increased regulation. In the past, legislation that impacted corporate America generally provided guidelines for behavior and was aimed principally at protecting consumers or maintaining fair trade practices. This paradigm has begun to shift to the government dictating how businesses must operate. This will certainly be true of financial institutions that have accepted TARP money or other government assistance. Because these institutions include some of the nation’s largest, the government will begin to make demands of its customers in order to maintain control over policy implementation and protect taxpayers. We’ve already started to see the government (rightly or wrongly) starting to determine executive pay. This will certainly trickle down to other industries directly or indirectly and will impact competitiveness as key players flee to foreign institutions.

Additionally, a trend that can be clearly seen in today’s headlines is increased government involvement in the boardroom. It is highly likely that new laws will be passed that hold corporate boards directly responsible for what could be perceived as taking unnecessary risks. Maintaining a consistent track record of all decisions and how they were arrived at will be paramount to limiting this risk.

Protecting personal data will also most likely remain center stage. Already, many states have enacted rules and regulations that require industries that deal with personal data to perform their duties in specific ways. An example would be the impending changes in the accounting industry that require all documents with personal information to be encrypted or otherwise protected by 2010. This will in many cases, especially with smaller firms, require a change in workflow or an investment in technology in order to comply. Many firms simply don’t have the knowledge or skills to implement the right kind of plan for their business to stay in compliance.
Businesses need to be prepared to operate in this more challenging environment. Those businesses that are successful will have solid plans for the following:

• Protecting client information, personal or otherwise.
• Maintaining a detailed corporate library of key internal documents and any changes over time.
• Implementing transparent corporate governance protocols.

There are plenty of solutions out there to help companies manage their business information. Some simple subscription based services, such as Praura (see www.praura.com) will go a long way towards helping these smaller firms manage their information intelligently without breaking the bank.

Can You Help Your Client Grow Their Business For Free? Then Do It!

Your clients are an incredibly important asset. If you’ve managed to establish a solid working relationship with a client over an extended period, then this relationship and the goodwill it represents is one of the most important assets your business owns. This is especially true for service providers. For most service providers, they can count on the fact that a large percentage of their future revenue is going to be directly connected to their existing clients.

One of the ways to make sure that your clients remain your clients is to provide value above and beyond what they are paying you for. This seems like common sense, but you’d be surprised how many consultants and accountants (for example) nickel and dime their customers. Over time, this will make your clients less likely to call you with a problem or include your in their planning process, which is a lost opportunity. So how do you make sure that your clients view you as an important resource?

One of the best things you can do is include planning for your clients in your everyday workweek. It may seem like unproductive and un-billable time to sit at your desk and think of things your customers could do to improve their business. But a better way to think of this is as an investment in your business’ future. As implied earlier, making a proactive investment in developing goodwill is a surefire way to actually developing it. Goodwill doesn’t just happen.

As CEO of my own project outsourcing company I often have to decide the best course of action for my business. I also have to think about ways to position the company for growth based on macro-economic trends and current competitive pressures. Sometimes I get ideas from reading articles, sometimes from meetings with my own vendors and other clients. It does not really matter where a good idea comes from. The bottom line is that if I come up with something that will help me grow my business, I usually try to think of how these ideas could be leveraged by my clients. Not every client can leverage every idea, but I can usually find one or two that can.

Sometimes I can help a client with execution, sometimes not. It doesn’t really matter. The fact is that my clients will now view me and my company as an important component of their planning process. As a vendor, it will be less likely that clients will cut us loose because we provide value beyond what they are paying for. This helps us serve as an extension of our clients’ businesses, which is good for our clients and good for us.

The bottom line is that you need to provide value beyond the services you are offering in order to be perceived as a true partner by your clients. You have to work at this and actually provide your clients with that extra value too, so it not easy. By proactively thinking this way your client relationships should be as close to bullet-proof as they can be and you will be more likely to receive future contracts references, which is how you can translate all that goodwill into revenue.