There are many reasons why it is important for organizations to have information management best practices. These include keeping information secure and confidential, overcome challenges related to IM, and managing the lifecycle of information.
Some of the greatest information management best practices include defining the information management strategy, establishing clear roles and responsibilities, understanding your current information environment, and developing an IM plan.
Your company has a growing number of information assets and an increasing amount of information. It is not just about the digital world — it’s also in your physical one. You’re struggling to find a way to manage, protect, and control all this information that is spread through multiple locations.
The most important part of any project is to know where your company stands, and how much more work needs to be done to improve. Since the size of your company’s information enterprise has grown exponentially in recent years, so have the challenges of managing and protecting it.
With best practice’s in place, you’ll save hours of time each week by easily organizing all your important business information. This allows you to have the most up-to-date info at your fingertips so you can be more productive and stay focused on the important things!
Information Management Best Practices
To get the advantages of information management, you need to follow up with the latest IM trends and implement these tips carefully.
In order to make sure that your organization is well-managed and is able to effectively deliver quality content, you need the right information management practices.
Information management practices are crucial for organizations to stay competitive. It is important for an organization to have a clear and a well-defined process in place to manage information effectively.
The following are the 10 essential information management best practices that every organization should implement:
1. Define the perfect strategy
One of the most important information management best practices is to clearly define the right process.
The IM strategy is to provide an overview of the content management process and outline the process for information management. The process will be set up with a framework. The framework for the process will consist of a process design, processes, and activities. The process design will consist of a set of tasks, processes, and work products.
2- Establish clear roles and responsibilities
In order to effectively manage information, organizations need to have clear guidelines for the use of information and training initiatives for employees. Individuals must have clear expectations of their roles within an organization and be able to communicate those expectations in a way that is easily understandable by others.
It is typically accomplished through designating information custodians who have responsibility for creating or acquiring the organization’s knowledge resources, authorizing their use, controlling access, and ensuring their quality.
3- Understand your current information environment
This is one of the most important information management best practices.
Every company is a part of an information ecosystem. That means that every company needs to understand its current information environment to be successful and to make sure that their company is on the right side of the law and that their employees’ rights are protected.
The first step in understanding your company’s current information environment is to identify the sources of information for the most important people in your organization—your employees. These are your subjects, or what you might call “people of interest” or “the people we care about”.
In addition, you need to know what are the different information silos and try to reduce them.
4- Develop an IM plan
Information management plans are used to document and organize the information needed for strategic initiatives. The plan is created by organizing and prioritizing all desired knowledge required for the project, its stakeholders, and the team.
5- Ensure all employees have access to the same tools, info, and systems
Having the same information management system, information, and systems among your employees is a key aspect of successful company culture. Employees who can utilize their skills to the fullest are able to improve productivity and morale. With cloud-based solutions and a mobile app, it’s easy to ensure that everyone has access.
6- Implement an effective governance model
As a business, you will always be under the microscope. There is no such thing as an independent company that can operate in a vacuum. The most important job of any organization is to provide a satisfactory service to its customers and adhere to it.
Compliance is not just about following a set of rules, but it’s also about creating a framework for self-regulation and fostering stakeholder trust. There are several ways to achieve compliance, though we will focus on three common methods:
Auditing: This method is based on the idea that an auditor is hired to review existing systems and to verify that they are meeting the requirements.
Audit Reports: Audits may produce a report on a company’s financials, operations, etc. This report may then be shared with shareholders or otherwise used to enforce compliance with existing policies.
Penalties: Fines and penalties can be imposed by government agencies in order to promote compliance and to deter deviation from established policies.
7- Develop policies
Information management policies provide the best approach for organizations to manage the dissemination of information. They define guidelines for how information is collected, stored, and dispersed. By developing, implementing, and managing these policies organizations can successfully implement their vision.
To ensure the success of a company, it is important to have clear policies in place. These policies can be implemented through a clear vision and plans. The model ensures that the company has a clear purpose. It also provides the framework for how decisions are made and policies are implemented.
8- Develop metrics for measuring success
In order to develop metrics for measuring success in achieving information management strategic objectives, the following steps must be taken:
Identify the IM strategic objective
Define the metric for measuring success in achieving the IM strategic objective;
Develop a plan for how to measure progress toward achieving the metric.
For example, if an organization is attempting to achieve an information management strategic objective of “increasing customer satisfaction” by improving customer service, in order for the organization to achieve this goal, it would need to assign a focus to customer service that is aligned with the organization’s IM strategic objective. The focus could be “increase customer satisfaction” which will direct the company in how it handles customer service internally through its policies, procedures, and training.
Some of the ways that companies are measuring their progress are:
- The number and types of initiatives in the company’s IM process (for example, e-discovery).
- The percentage of information being managed by internal staff.
- The amount of information that has been migrated to the cloud.
- Support for technology infrastructure.
9- Define a quality control process
There are many ways to ensure the quality of your information. The most common way is to have an information quality control process in place. This process can be implemented by any level of the company and often involves a manual review before distribution.
The other way is to have an information quality assurance (IQA) process in place. This process can be implemented by any level of the company and often involves a manual review before distribution.
The second way to implement a manual review of the audit file is by having an information security officer make a decision on whether or not to distribute it, and if so, how to do so. This process can be implemented at any level of the company and often involves a manual review before distribution.
10- Use an IM plan for each project
There are many ways to create a solid information management plan, but remember that it is important to keep things simple and avoid overthinking the process. When creating an IM plan, be aware of the types of information you need to collect and how you will use it.
11- Stay up to date
With the advancement of technology, different types of information arise. It is very important to stay up to date by following up on the latest trends in information management.
What are the 3 Principal Stages of Information Management?
The three stages of information management are:
1- Gathering
Gathering information from multiple sources and converting it into a common format.
2- Managing
Managing content in the form of data and documents.
3- Sharing
Sharing content with other people in a variety of ways, such as publishing on social media platforms or emailing to colleagues.
