My new report Managing Enterprise Information [30pp download] illustrates the wide range of factors that should be taken into consideration in managing information in the enterprise. After an introduction about the value of information and about the need to assess information risk there are sections on governance, information behaviours, working in teams, information discovery, knowledge management and records management.

The good practice I have seen in the course of my work is presented as fifty recommendations, none of which involve any additional investment in technology.

To quote the former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the greatest challenge that all organisations face is managing known unknowns and unknown unknowns. This will be especially difficult in the post-Covid19 years as organisations cope with achieving more with fewer employees (many of them in different roles and with different responsibilities) and almost certainly a loss of corporate expertise which may not be immediately obvious. 

Read through this report and tick off how many of the recommendations you have already implemented. Any score less than 50 means that you are at risk of making business-critical decisions during 2020 and 2021 without having the highest quality information available to every employee. Is that a risk that you are prepared to take?

Martin White