Assessing your business’s information management quality
ESTIMATED READING TIME: 3 MINUTES
Your reporting numbers are the tip of an iceberg – your information management iceberg.
This metaphor works on two levels:
Most business leaders who rely on those reporting numbers have no idea what lies beneath them – the calculations, the effort, the cost of generating them, nor the quality of the information that’s gone into them.
If what lies “beneath the surface” of your IM isn’t visible (to you or to anyone), then it’s a big hunk of unseen risk that could easily be sinking your business assurance.
You’ll know if point 2 is true if you’ve detected something odd in the numbers, an unreliable figure or untrustworthy reports, and extensive effort is often expended trying to resolve the issue or explain why it exists.
(Cue the scene from Titanic where the ship hits the iceberg)
Gaining visibility over what’s under the surface of your reporting
We wrote a general overview of the things happening beneath the surface of everyone’s reporting in our last blog – you can read it here.
But if you want something more specific, try this short quiz.
Answer yes or no to each of these questions:
| Yes | No | |
|---|---|---|
| 1. I believe the quality of my numbers & analytics is primarily a result of the ability of my people. | ||
| 2. My organisation invests in training & educating staff on best practices for information management. | ||
| 3. I believe a common business language is fundamental for quality information. | ||
| 4. My organisation has a business term glossary that is actively governed, used and promoted as essential. | ||
| 5. I believe the information artefacts my staff produce using our business data are as important as the data itself and should be managed. | ||
| 6. My organisation has information management frameworks and agreed information artefact life cycle management and ownership. | ||
| 7. I believe it’s essential for executive staff to understand and champion the organisation’s information management practices. | ||
| 8. I regularly receive reports on information management activities, progress, issues and resolutions. | ||
| 9. I believe the success of the business is tied to our willingness to go deep to find the root causes of our information issues, rather than implementing quick and shallow options. | ||
| 10. My team operates our issues resolution activity with transparency, collaboration and innovation, and are fully supported in undertaking even large-scale, root cause resolution activities. |
Scoring
For every Yes answer, give yourself one point. Calculate your total for the blue questions and the white questions separately.
Mentally plot where you fall on this table. The blue scores go on the horizontal axis and the white score goes on the vertical axis.
You can now see a basic picture of where your business has strengths/weaknesses on both the knowledge and the action of quality information management.
We hope this allows you a better understanding of IM and some greater visibility over your current level of quality in this space.
If you’d like a more in-depth analysis, we’ve got you covered.
The Numbers Game Assessment Tool
This month we’re excited to launch our comprehensive new online tool for self-assessment of your business’s IM activities – The Numbers Game Assessment Tool.
We’ve worked hard to create a truly useful Assessment increases visibility over what’s going on beneath the surface of your IM iceberg. It’s scope covers a broad and deep range of both IM knowledge and IM actions to help you better recognise what constitutes quality IM, as well as delivering an understanding of activities that you may need to undertake.
We encourage you to take the Assessment (click here to start).
It’ll take up to ½ an hour to complete, and within a few working days we’ll deliver you a report outlining your organisation’s strengths and weaknesses in the IM space. The report will also offer direction on where to focus your IM improvement activities, to get you started towards better quality information in your business.
Just gaining this piece of visibility can:
raise awareness of unseen risk,
focus activities for those with IM responsibilities,
help create an IM landscape where information and reporting issues are never unsolvable or inexplicable.
Jump over to The Numbers Game Assessment Tool now.
And we’d love to hear back from you, once you receive the report, to know how you’ve found it.
Mark Atkins
Mark is a co-founder & Chief Development Officer at Intraversed, helping organisations establish the Intralign Ecosystem, an award winning information management & governance methodology, to achieve reliable information, stable tech spend & greater IT project success.
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