Valuing Organizational Information
What is Organizational Information?
Information is everywhere in an organization. Employees must be able to obtain and analyze the many different levels, formats and granularities of organizational information to make decisions. Successfully collecting, compiling, sorting and analyzing information can provide tremendous insight into how an organization is performing.
Levels, formats, and granularities of organizational information.
Transactional Information vs. Analytical Information
The Value of Timely Information
Timeliness is an aspect of information that depends on the situation.
- Real-time Information - immediate, up-to-date information.
- Real-time System - provides real-time information in response to query requests.
Business decisions are only as good as the quality of the information used to make the decisions. You never want to find yourself using technology to help you make a bad decision faster.
Characteristics of high-quality information include:
- Accuracy
- Completeness
- Consistency
- Uniqueness
- Timeliness
1. ACCURACY
Are all the values correct? For example, is the name spelt correctly? Is the dollar amount recorded properly?
2. COMPLETENESS
Partial information may as well be incomplete information because it is only a small part of the picture.
3. 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?
4. UNIQUENESS
Is each transaction, entity and event represented only once in the information? For example, are they any duplicate customers?
5. TIMELINESS
Is the information current with respect to the business requirements? For example, is information updated weekly, daily, or hourly?
Low-quality information example:
Understanding the Costs of Poor Information
The four primary sources of low-quality information include:
- Online customers intentionally enter inaccurate information to protect their privacy.
- Information from different systems has different entry standards and formats.
- Call center operators enter abbreviated or erroneous information by accident or to save time.
- Third party and external information contain inconsistencies, inaccuracies and errors.
Potential business effects resulting from low-quality information include:
- Inability to accurately track customers
- Difficulty identifying valuable customers
- Inability to identify selling opportunities
- Marketing to nonexistent customers
- Difficulty tracking revenue due to inaccurate invoices
- Inability to build strong customer relationship
Understanding the Costs of Good Information
High-quality information can significantly improve the chances of making a good decision. Good decisions can directly impact an organization's bottom line.
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