In today’s organisations, information is a valued business asset and when exploited effectively it can act as a key differentiator in driving their success.
However, organisations need to confront two significant challenges while working to effectively harness their information:
- Laying a well-thought information blueprint that effectively integrates information needs and routes to generate desired results.
- Developing an effective mechanism to manage the exponential growth in business information.
The above challenges are gaining wide recognition across industry today, and senior executives across the private and public sectors, are realising that ERP and CRM implementations alone are not sufficient to generate the desired results, and that effective business information exploitation will pave the way in driving and improving business performance.
Naturally, a range of measures are being explored to facilitate effective exploitation across all organisation processes. Companies are now creating systems to manage information as both a personal and organisational priority, and not just as an IT issue. They realise that information is an opportunity created across the varied intersections of people, processes and systems within an organisation. And consequently placing greater emphasis on improving ineffective policies and procedures, and providing better training to ensure that employees possess the skills and capabilities to drive a robust information culture within the business processes.
Industry research has revealed that customer management has the greatest potential in delivering effective business results through better information exploitation. Organisations such as Tesco (UK) and Marriott (Global) have already built considerable momentum along this path, and are presently benefitting from the positive impact it has on building proximity with customers and improved business performance. Clearly, information is the opportunity of the decade!
