Information Flows.

Arguably the best looking waterfall is one where the water rushes down into a cascading explosion of foam at the base. Information is quite similar- the best kind of information is the kind that rushes through the organisation!

How do we achieve this?

We need to streamline information!
Streamlining information isn't hard, or expensive, in fact most business process management software packages do it as standard. In short, it is allowing the information to move effectively between layers in the organisation. Those who need it have it, those who want it can access it and those who want more of it can enter it. Simplicity in theory. Efficiency in practicality.

It also promotes a higher level of productivity.
Think of the time, money and effort that you could save by entering all the information in the organisation at once, only once, and letting everybody use their job-specific sections of it to their fullest.
Not to mention how simple and effective that solution will be over having two-dozen applications all doing the same thing. It's mind boggling!

Although, this isn't all down to the IT systems in place.
A lot of it also comes down to how much collaboration and thought there is in the initial information gathered and entered. While an IT system can make you more efficient and more productive- initial garbage in will only produce end result garbage out. And that's not what we want!
Good example, the organisation I previously worked for had stacks of old information that they wanted on a computerised database. A process that took an insane amount of time, quite simply, and quite frankly, because the original information was practically useless. Multiple choices of abbreviations for the same thing, missing information and sometimes entire pages of deleted information.
In the end it took months just to wade through all of this invaluable information- and make it usable- once more!

But in many cases, most organisations are a bit more organised than this and have their information neatly sorted.
So for you, you lovely people, all your concerns are in whether or not the system will deliver and what streamlining is. Well, it's a buzz word but when not doing that it's also a really good way of saying "makes everything faster, better, more efficient and transparent." So that you can see where the information is going, what the information is and help it to get there yesterday.

As for the delivery? I'd bet you that you could reap the benefits almost immediately as you will feel a lot more organised, far more reassured and like you can finally use this information.
No longer will you be questioning what you have, where it is, how you can use it or what use it really is to your organisation. You'll know.

Not to mention- you just broke the computing and business barrier!

Thank you for reading, as always! I hope this has been informative and again, as is the trend in recent posts, more a casual information post over a particularly themed post.

Feel free to comment if you have something to share!

All information presented here is © copyright Carkean Solutions Ltd., 2010 - Not to be used without our permission - The views expressed here are the views of an idividual not the corporation