Organizational Information
- When addressing a significant business issue, employees must be able to obtain and analyse all the relevant information so they can make the best decision possible
- Information granularity refers to the extent of detail within the information
- Successfully collecting, compiling, sorting, and finally analysing information from multiple levels, in varied formats, exhibiting different granularity can provide tremendous insight into how an organization is performing
The Value Transactional and Analytical Information
- Transactional Information encompasses all of the information contain within a single business process or unit of work, and its primary purpose is to support the performing of daily operational tasks
- Analytical Information encompasses all organizational information, and its primary purpose is to support the performing of managerial tasks
The Value of Timely Information
- Real-time information means immediate, up-to-date information
- Real-time systems provide real-time information in response to query requests
The Value of Quality Information
- Accuracy - Are all the values correct? For example, is the name spelled correctly? Is the amount recorded properly?
- Completeness - Are any of the values missing? For example, is the address complete including street, city, state and zip code
- Consistency - Is aggregate or summary information in agreement with detailed information? For example, do all total fields equal the true total of the individual fields?
- Uniqueness - Is each transaction, entity, and event represented only once in the information? For example, are there any duplicate customers?
- Timeliness - Is the information current with respect to the business requirements? For example, is information updated weekly, daily or hourly?
- Understanding the costs of poor information - wrong information can lead to making the wrong decision that can cost time, money, and even reputations
- Inability to accurately track customers, which directly affects strategic initiatives such as CRM and SCM
- Difficulty identifying the organization's most valuable customers
- Inability to identify selling opportunities and wasted revenue from marketing to non-existing customers and non-deliverable mail
- Difficulty tracking revenue because of inaccurate invoices
- Inability to build strong relationship with customers