Gartner recommends a strong regime of e-mail archiving with metadata and taxonomy protocols to allow users to find information quickly using a search engine. Gartner research director John Roberts says most clients groan at the lack of information management and the dominance of e-mail inside their own organisation. -Changing the situation is more about corporate culture than technology," he observes.
-Disabling the 'reply to all' button would be a good start in my book. Staff should also be discouraged from reporting everything they do, or explaining the rationale for every decision, to their bosses. Management is overloaded with workers behaving like this. Instead, peers in middle management should be encourage set up specific distribution lists, share information and collaborate in real-time."
No end of data
Organisations are not just bombarded by e-mail, of course. They also gather mind-boggling amounts of data from a proliferation of management systems that look after enterprise resources, the supply chain, and customer relationships.
We are capturing so much data today that researchers from the University of California say that by the end of 2002 we had recorded and held twice as much business information as we possessed in 1999 -- a staggering finding.
Researchers Peter Lyman and Hal Varian, who are attached to the university's Berkley School of Information Management, estimate 800 megabytes of information were stored for every human in 2002. In that year, they say we generated the equivalent of 500,000 libraries the size of America's Library of Congress. More than 90 percent of all this data was stored in digital format, rather than as paper or celluloid records.
The challenge is to swim rather than drown in this data. Which is easier said than done. Commentators say the solution lies in a combination of changing corporate behaviour, as well as finding the right software to help organise the data so that it can be found.
Get organised, save money
A number of useful technology alternatives exist in the market to handle so-called structured data -- the information that comes from systems such as CRM (customer relationship management). The real problem is handling unstructured data, such as e-mails, and creating an environment in which staff can collaborate and find information and use it with the minimum fuss.
Mike Kearney, of content management specialist Vignette, says that while technical solutions exists, management would do worse than to instill financial incentives for staff to change behaviour, reducing e-mail traffic and using information that already exists on in-house systems. -This would help reduce the number of duplicate spreadsheets and databases and prevent people thinking they need to invent the wheel all the time," he says.
Significant savings can be made if you get the equation right. One of Australia's largest four banks has added nearly $7 million to its bottom line by cutting inefficiency from the way it handles contractor invoices and recruitment.
The bank, which does not want to be named for fear it will lose a competitive advantage over the others, has been using Web-based software designed by recruitment agency Drake International.
Drake's chairman for Australia, Ron Urwin, says -these are the bank's own figures and the savings have nothing to do with the calibre of selection"
-Some $4 million of efficiency came from integrating contracts into one system, making the bank's recruitment system easier to manage. Another $2.6 million came from simplifying the invoicing process. Before the bank adopted the web-based solution, its HR staff were swamped with files and information."
This is not a unique experience for Australian workers, according to Eclipse's Peter Williams. -We are the late majority when it comes to data management," he says. -If there is not an obvious reason to spend the money, then local companies don't spend it.
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