Data Profit vs. Data Waste
Real World Information Optimization
“Vanilla” search alone, however, is typically insufficient to provide a strong data access foundation for information optimization. Other key aspects of data access that help contribute to effective information optimization include:
- Relevance: Superior relevance calculation is critical for effective information optimization. Returning a poorly organized or poorly ranked list of results will make it difficult for users to pinpoint data of real value to the business. The omission of relevant data, on the other hand, leads to more data waste.
- Freshness: In today’s business environment, the data that is most useful is often that which is the most recent. So whatever mechanism is used to provide users with relevant data must be especially able to quickly index and return results from brand-new documents that have just been created or updated.
- Security: Data access can never be allowed to compromise data security. So special precautions must be taken to preserve restrictions to access and maintain consistent security and compliance policies even as access to relevant data sources across the enterprise are facilitated through search and other access tools.
2. Putting data and data sources in their business context. In addition to providing users with ready access to any and all data relevant to their needs, effective information optimization requires an applied understanding of the business context of an information request.
Context adds substantial insight and business value to data. For example, a transactional system will indicate that sales in a given territory spiked suddenly last month. With access to the right data properly contextualized, however, a sales manager might quickly realize that a major competitor faced a major legal problem in that same territory—and that this may have been a contributing factor to the spike in sales volume.
Information optimization is therefore not just a matter of indexing and searching data. It is also about placing that data in the context of the business problems and objectives that users are trying to address on a daily basis.
3. Making data active. Effective information optimization requires that data do more than just sit there passively waiting for users to find it. It also requires relevant data to be “pushed” to users where and when it’s appropriate to do so—and that data is more aggressively utilized as part of automated workflows and business processes.
An example of this is the healthcare provider referenced in the previous section. Here, alerts concerning new compliance content are being distributed to users’ desktops on a daily basis.
Critical Advantages in Tough Times
Given current constraints on technology budgets, corporate decision-makers have to be very cautious about which initiatives they fund.
So, while data profit is clearly better than data waste, the real question is why any organization should specifically prioritize an information optimization initiative over competing investments. There are several compelling reasons why information optimization warrants priority consideration:
- Business opportunities are more precious than ever: In a sluggish marketplace, every single business opportunity is precious. Companies that use their data to maximum advantage are much better able to spot these opportunities than those that don’t.
- Customer relationships are more valuable than ever: When customers with money to spend are fewer and farther between, it becomes even more essential to keep the ones you already have. The visibility that information optimization provides into customers’ needs, preferences, and behaviors is thus especially valuable today.
- Informed decision-making is more critical than ever: In a down economy, there is less room than ever for bad decisions. And the ability to make good decisions that elude the competition can result in even greater performance differentiation.
- Big mistakes are more dangerous than ever: Activist regulators, an aggressive media, shareholders and customers are all raising the stakes when it comes to errors of both omission and commission. Few companies can afford the consequences of mistakes in compliance and reporting—which can include fines, damage to reputation and brand, legal injunctions and a reduced stock price.
- Inefficiency is less tolerable than ever: When it’s difficult to drive revenue up, it’s that much more important to drive expenses down. Information optimization saves companies millions of dollars in knowledge worker salaries by making them more productive and eliminating duplications of effort and purchasing.
Perhaps what makes information optimization most compelling as an immediate investment under present conditions is the breadth of its impact on the business. While various projects under consideration by management may promise to boost sales or streamline supply chains, information optimization can positively affect every aspect of a company’s operations—improving performance and productivity, while reducing cost and risk.
Every company looking for a practical way to improve top- and bottom-line business performance in today’s challenging economy should therefore strongly consider adoption of information optimization technology and best practices. By doing so, they will be able to out-perform competitors that continue to suffer from data waste and further distance themselves from the competition.
Vivisimo helps organizations unlock and optimize the true business value of information—regardless of application or source—to drive innovation, real-time decisions and actionable insight. Visit
www.vivisimo.com