« 40% of people's day spent searching

  

We meet at a defining moment.  The times are serious, the depression deep for traditional thinking about business and technology to continue.  Because one of the things that we have to change is the idea that technology makes all the difference. 

When 80% of information is unmanaged and 40% of people’s day is spent searching for information, yesterday’s thinking is just not working.

For years software has been created, sold, and installed, only to cause lost productivity and increased workloads.  Breaches of personal information, missing information, re-installs, re-boots, and failed upgrades, result in valuable time lost by ordinary people -– VPs, assistants, analysts, managers, nurses, and customer representatives –- and a less effective business.

Even internal IT people have challenges keeping up with constant upgrades and compatibility of existing software.  Time for learning new technologies that could actually improve their business is spent fighting fires.

And most knowledge is not documented to be easily found for salespeople writing a proposal or nurses having a complete view of a patient’s history.  80% of knowledge and how to find it is stored in people’s heads (source: Delphi Consulting Group).

The truth shows that people do what’s necessary to improve business performance with or without software.  They adapt and work hard, sometimes sacrificing personal time for bettering the business and co-workers within.  Markets change.  Recessions come and go.  But information is key to getting the job done.

Now let there be no doubt.  Today’s technology can make jobs easier and lives better for customers.  There are technologists, some very smart and creative individuals, building software that solves real, painful, reoccurring problems.  Others are looking to the future and monumentally shifting the way the world communicates.  And here’s where traditional thinking about business and technology needs to change.

We measure progress by how many people can find relevant information quickly and intuitively; whether you spend less time fitting your business to technology and more towards growing the business and satisfying customers.  We measure progress in the number of patients that receive accurate and timely results; the manager, analyst, and call taker who has information at their finger tips to answer questions imposed upon them by management.

We measure progress by the people who can effectively utilize information as a significant asset -- instead of focusing you on buying and installing new software every 18 months like Microsoft, Cognos, Oracle, and SAP.

We measure the strength of our company not by the number of customers we have or financial metrics like EBITA, but by whether someone is satisfied, no, smiling after they talk with us, or calls us just to say ‘hi’ and tells us about their kids.

Because being in your shoes, not having the information at your finger tips, while a physician, customer, partner, or friend waits on the phone is the reason we are here.  The reason this blog is here, is for you.  Now is the time to share information with others in similar situations and learn ways to transform company culture and processes.  We’ll contribute too, as we learn from our mistakes and the mistakes of others, gain insights by involving ourselves in this community, and taking your feedback to continuously improve the community.

Now is the time to finally manage information properly as the way of doing business.

Comments

[Sarah]

Tom, I help with governance and best practices at our company. Hope there will be more to read here, some more details perhaps.
~S

[tomhudock]

Thanks Sarah. IMO we have good content coming up. We'll touch on a variety of aspects of Information Management, including governance and best practices. Got ideas? Comment about them. Want to change how your business manages it's information? Collaborate with people from this site. We hope this is informative for people just like yourself.
Our ears are listening,
Tom