Take the quick quiz below to see if your organisation is on top of information management.
1 You are creating a new IT system: do you find you don't know where the data it requires is, or who to ask about it?
Yes No
2 Is it difficult to get meaningful performance reports out of your multiple systems?
3 Do customers complain that they are not receiving all their mail when they have already notified you of their change of address several times?
4 Are your contractors regarded as employees in the HR system, casual labour in the Payroll system and suppliers in the Purchasing system?
5 Can you easily generate a list of current contractors from any or all of these systems?
6 Does the category "Other" or "Misc" constitute a significant percentage of sales or cost or any other variable in your report?
7 Are you shocked by the quote you get for integrating your system? Does your system integrator justify this by telling you that they have to "cleanse" the data?
8 When Sales and Product Development talk about "clients", is it apparent that each is referring to a different group of people?
9 Do your customers threaten to take their business elsewhere because your invoices are inaccurate or incomplete?
10 Six months after the development of your new IT system has commenced, do you find out that another division in your organisation has a system that can do 80% of what you need, and is fully operational, but no one thought to tell you of it?