Question

How can an information management strategy reduce the costs of IT systems and investments?

Answer 1

Information management strategies are plans that guide a company to keep its IM practices in sync, improve its processes, and prepare for the future. These plans can include the following information: Current status. Goals for the future. Concrete steps to achieve those goals.Management information systems improve your decision-making, because they provide information that is accurate, timely, relevant and complete. ... Companies that use management information systems ensure that all managers work from the same set of data and make their decisions based on identical information.

Information technology helps firms contract in size because it can reduce transaction costs—the costs incurred when a firm buys on the marketplace what it cannot make itself. According to transaction cost theory, firms and individuals seek to economize on transaction costs, much as they do on production costs.

To reduse it costs

Rising IT costs are something that all businesses in the digital age are having to contend with. Why? Because the modern IT department is an innovator – the driving force behind digital transformations, and the creation of new products, services, and opportunities to connect with more customers. Ways that IT can cut costs:

1. Embrace the Cloud – Carefully.

2. Automate IT Services.

3. Outsource.

4. Align Expenditure with Business Strategy.

5. Reduce Turnover and Restructure Your Workforce. Form a close relationship with the CFO.

It is the job of the chief financial officer to save the organization money. As such, they will prove extremely useful in analyzing a proposed cost-cutting initiative, and provide an objective evaluation of the real costs that are likely to be saved upon completion

Like any other business practice, IM incorporates general management concepts, such as planning, controlling, and execution. Information management also includes data management and its associated activities. Data management is the development and implementation of tools and policies that allow data to progress from stage to stage during its lifecycle.

Information management has four main components.

• People: Not only those involved in IM, but also the creators and users of data and information.
• Policies and Processes: The rules that determine who has access to what, steps for how to store and secure information must be stored and secured, and timeframes for archiving or deleting.
• Technology: The physical items (computers, filing cabinets, etc.) that store data and information, and any software used.
• Data and Information: What the rest of the components use.

Principles of Information Management

There are many information management principles. A well-known set is the the Information Management Body of Knowledge (IMBOK), which is a framework that breaks down management skills into into six knowledge areas and four process areas.

The knowledge areas include the following:

• Information Technology (IT): Hardware and software
• Information Systems: IT built into a system that meets business needs and policies
• Business Information: Created by analyzing and contextualizing data using tools such as the information system
• Business Processes: How to evaluate and use the business information to make decisions
• Business Benefit: The desired advantage the business information will provide
• Business Strategy: The master plan that gives a company a direction. Ideally, decisions made through the business processes, which are based on business information, will guide the strategy and lead to the realization of the business benefits.

The IMBOK process areas are:

• Projects: Adding new capacity, software, and hardware to information systems
• Business Change: Evaluating information to drive improvements in processes
• Business Operations: The day-to-day of a business. These will guide improvements based on updates to processes, and will hopefully increase benefits.
• Performance Management: Trying to ensure operations are running at peak capacity

What Are Information Management Strategies?

Information management strategies are plans that guide a company to keep its IM practices in sync, improve its processes, and prepare for the future. These plans can include the following information:

• Current status
• Goals for the future
• Concrete steps to achieve those goals
• Plans to acquire new resources
• Processes and policies for interacting with business departments
• Assigning responsibility for implementing and reporting each

Planning a Strategy and Creating an Information Management Program

There are several activities required to deliver an effective information management strategy:

1. Create a governance framework - Identify roles and responsibilities in regard to the access, protection, and distribution of the organization’s data.
2. Categorize information - Most organizations treat all data the same as the keepers of data (typically the IT department) are not the owners of data (i.e. end users or department heads). Owners of data are too busy with day-to-day activities that they are unconcerned with information management.
3. Store data according to its value – All mission critical data needs to be instantly accessible and should be stored on tier one storage, important data stored on tier two, archive legacy data permanently offsite and delete personal data.
4. Protect data according to its value – Replicate ll mission critical data throughout the day to ensure no data loss incurs, backup important data to an alternative location daily, legacy data is already archived permanently offsite.
5. Data recovery/business continuity/disaster recovery planning – Ensure the organization tests data recovery and business continuity/disaster recovery regularly to ensure it can overcome any potential data loss as soon as possible.
6. Access management – Ensure types of users are identified and enforced, such as administrator, read and write access, read only access or no access.