What strategies are adopted if information requirements are not well-defined?

Organisations are very complex environments in which to deliver concrete solutions. As outlined above, there are many challenges that need to be overcome when planning and implementing information management projects.

When confronted with this complexity, project teams often fall back upon approaches such as:

• Focusing on deploying just one technology in isolation.
• Purchasing a very large suite of applications from a single vendor, in the hope that this can be used to solve all information management problems at once.
• Rolling out rigid, standardised solutions across a whole organisation, even though individual business areas may have different needs.
• Forcing the use of a single technology system in all cases, regardless of whether it is an appropriate solution.
• Purchasing a product ‘for life’, even though business requirements will change over time.
• Fully centralising information management activities, to ensure that every activity is tightly controlled.

All of these approaches will fail, as they are attempting to convert a complex set of needs and problems into simple (even simplistic) solutions. The hope is that the complexity can be limited or avoided when planning and deploying solutions.

In practice, however, there is no way of avoiding the inherent complexities within organisations. New approaches to information management must therefore be found that recognise (and manage) this complexity.

Information management systems are only successful if they are actually used by staff, and it is not sufficient to simply focus on installing the software centrally.

In practice, most information management systems need the active participation of staff throughout the organisation.

For example:

• Staff must save all key files into the document/records management system.
• Decentralised authors must use the content management system to regularly update the intranet.
• Lecturers must use the learning content management system to deliver e-learning packages to their students.
• Front-line staff must capture call details in the customer relationship management system.
• Principle 3: deliver tangible & visible benefits

  It is not enough to simply improve the management of information ‘behind the scenes’. While this will deliver real benefits, it will not drive the required cultural changes, or assist with gaining adoption by staff (principle 2).

  In many cases, information management projects initially focus on improving the productivity of publishers or information managers.

  While these are valuable projects, they are invisible to the rest of the organisation. When challenged, it can be hard to demonstrate the return on investment of these projects, and they do little to assist project teams to gain further funding.

• n be difficult to know where to start when planning information management projects.

  While some organisations attempt to prioritise projects according to the ‘simplicity’ of the technology to be deployed, this is not a meaningful approach. In particular, this often doesn’t deliver short-term benefits that are tangible and visible (principle 3).

  Instead of this technology-driven approach, the planning process should be turned around entirely, to drive projects based on their ability to address business needs.

  In this way, information management projects are targeted at the most urgent business needs or issues. These in turn are derived from the overall business strategy and direction for the organisation as a whole.