In today’s digital world, the principles of information management are becoming essential for any organization in any industry. Effectively managing enterprise information requires a proper strategy that define the proper collection, storage, retrieval, and analysis of your available data to enhance business decisions and future proof your organization.
To ensure that this process is effective, there are 7 principles of information management that organizations should implement including accuracy, completeness, timeliness, relevance, accessibility, security, and integrity.
When businesses follow by these guidelines, they are assisting their management teams in making decisions that will improve their productivity and revenue, aiding in overcoming related challenges, ensure information lifecycle is maintained, and clearly defining who is responsible for information management.
In this article, we will go through each of these principles in details, highlighting their importance, and providing practical advice on how to implement them in your organization.
What are the Principles of Information Management?
The principles of information management are:
1- Accuracy
Organizations must ensure that the many types of information they collect and retain are reliable and accurate. You don’t want to rely on data that could be incorrect or inaccurate because it will be utilized to make crucial decisions for your company.
Based on my experience, there are several methods to ensure that information is accurate by automating data entry to reduce human errors, investing in one of the best intelligent document processing systems, and validate different data sources.
2- Completeness
Completeness is a fundamental principle and refers to the requirement that all relevant and essential information must be included in any collection of data or record-keeping. The principle of completeness ensures that decision-makers have all the necessary information they need to make informed decisions, and that nothing essential is left out.
When information is incomplete, it can lead to inaccurate or biased decision-making. For instance, if sales report only includes partial data, a manager may make decisions based on incomplete information, resulting in poor outcomes for the organization.
3- Timeliness
Maintaining up-to-date information is of utmost importance. It is essential to regularly review and update information to ensure its accuracy and relevance. Failure to do so may result in outdated data being used for decision-making, which can have negative consequences for the organization.
Relying on old or inaccurate data can lead to poor decision-making and put the organization at risk. To ensure that information is up to date, organizations should establish procedures for regular reviews.
4- Relevance
This principle emphasizes the importance of obtaining the right information that is aligned to the organization’s goals and objectives. At the end, our goal is to deliver the right information to the right person in the right place and time.
5- Accessibility
If information is not easily accessible or is spread across different information silos, it can cause significant problems for an organization. As information managers, it is our responsibility to make sure that the appropriate people have access to the right information whenever they need it, without compromising the security of the documents.
In today’s digital age, it became a must to ensure that information can be accessed from anywhere, whether it’s from home, the organization, or even while on vacation. This means that organizations must have secure, reliable systems in place to enable authorized personnel to access information remotely.
6- Security
Information security is a concern in today’s world. Every day, we hear about new data breaches and cyberattacks that compromise sensitive information. It is essential to ensure that only authorized individuals have access to the information they need to see.
7- Integrity
Integrity means that the information must not be changed or altered without any approval from its owner. You must make sure that data integrity is preserved and in case of any accidental damage, your organization could restore it using any backup procedures.
