Another of the key themes from this years’ BIR annual survey brings up the increasingly important aspect of the information managers role as strategic advisor to the organisation. We have all seen that information and mis-information can have a huge impact on an organisation’s operations and strategy, now with the increasing need to gain value from data and bring together internal and external data and information everything just got a lot more complex.
We have long talked about the importance of the information professional to the organisation but in this perfect storm of information and data it’s time to take those ideas, skills and knowledge to the next level.
Corporate strategy is key and core to the organisation but what is that strategy built on? Market data, competitive intelligence, internal research and development data, financial information and news to name just a few. The information team with their wealth of experience, knowledge and skills in research, information management, information and data literacy are more than qualified to play an important role in ensuring that the right information (read reliable, trusted and validated) is available to those developing and planning the corporate strategy and that that information is kept up to date and relevant to help evolve the strategy as needed.
Technology is a closely linked partner in effective information management and information professionals are increasingly required to have skills and knowledge to assess what technology and automation services are appropriate for their departments to operate in increasingly demanding environments. A number of organisations I have spoken with recently are considering intelligence tools or add ons to existing systems to help optimise their workload ensuring that they can concentrate on providing the best value add service to the organisation.
So with advising on and management of information sources and licensing, introduction of data content management, challenges around gaining benefits from an increasingly vast source of unstructured content and considering what technology and when to implement it to enhance effective information management I think it is fair to say that information professionals can indeed be considered as strategic advisors to the organisation. The challenge sometimes is communicating the importance of the information professionals skills and knowledge to executive leadership so that they also see information professionals as a key strategic advisor to support and facilitate their objectives and goals for the future.
Find out more about what our respondents thought on this in the annual BIR survey published in September.