Focus on data context, not content: intranets and affiliated software can add value to the mountain of accumulated data - Guest Column

Communications News, Dec, 2003 by D. Keith Denton

In 1998, a study released by Pitney Bowes showed that the average businessperson in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom sends or receives 190 messages a day--including 30 e-mails, 22 voice messages, four pager beeps and three express mailings, along with faxes, phone calls and letters in between.

This indiscriminate knowledge sharing is not confined strictly to electronic information. Employees are regularly bombarded with innumerable documents-the typical Fortune 500 company will publish thousands of such documents annually.

Management guru Peter Drucker contends that past computer and information technology has had barely any impact on strategic decisions. He has observed that current use of information does not affect management decisions. IT is focused on collection, storage, transmission, analysis and representation of information. Simply adding more information does not necessarily make decision making easier.

Internet, fax, e-mail mad intranet technologies provide more content and data, but little direction. The degree that departments, like IT, contribute to business success depends on how well each supports the organization's mission. IT has helped preserve assets and control costs, and this can be important since a serious cost disadvantage can destroy a business. The strategic value, and thus the usefulness of IT, however, has been extremely limited.

What management values is information technology that helps make sense of endless data so it can be turned into useful knowledge. Data needs to be refined so it can help focus efforts. Refining data can ultimately help executives make the correct choices and act in a unified way.

For IT to be highly valued requires a rethinking of the purpose of information. Information technology, to be useful to managerial decision-making, must be combined with a conceptual rethinking of both the purpose and meaning of that information. Begin by focusing on the context of what and how the information is used, and not simply adding more and more content.

Helping managers understand the meaning of that information and its implementations to their strategic objectives is essential to being seen as more valued. Subtracting the content and adding more context about what the information is makes a manager's job of deciding easier.

IT should focus on using its expertise to find better ways to integrate managerial strategies and visions within a group, department or organization. Intranet technology can be one of those tools. It can add context by helping control and redirect efforts, while reducing the information overload. Intranets can be used for tracking, analyzing and displaying essential information critical to executive decision making.

Today, intranet technology can help managers identify the critical information needed to make good decisions. Web technology and supporting software can be used to measure, display and provide continual real-time feedback, helping managers stay focused on their most important concerns.

Intranets can be used to integrate disconnected data and show executives a more realistic picture of what is really going on within the organization. Intranets are able to do this by using integrated feedback through a series of computer screens that help team members see what they are about, where they are headed and how they are doing.

Information technology can add context by creating a visual instrument console or executive dashboard. The objective of such a visual display is to build a sense of context about the information. It can give busy executives a "big picture" mentality about what is going on rather than the piecemeal perspective many get by being inundated with excessive content.

As Drucker notes, what is needed is not more data, but rather technology that helps make sense out of the endless data that piles higher and higher. What is needed is a technology that helps managers make the right choices and behave in ways that are consistent with the purpose and objective of the organization. Today, intranets can become a contextual tool for reshaping organizations, adding meaning and purpose to work.

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D. Keith Denton is CEO of Civid3. Sand comments for publication to guest@commonnews.com.