Information management, is document management at its finest!
Information Management is most easily explained via the domain of Document Management. Documentation Management is unavoidable in life as every person has their own administration and organizations often have ones that are way bigger. In ancient times civilizations such as the Inca’s, Egypt, and China flourished to a huge extent because they took great effort in Documentation Management. The basis of its practice consists of two parts that require separate attention. These will be explained in more detail taking books in a library as an apprehensible figure of speech.
The first part is whether the content within the documents is correct. This often requires subject matter experts (SME) to verify the content, as not everyone is able to control the content of the document on being correct. To stick to the metaphor of the library the action to be taken here is to verify whether the books content is correct. This can be done by the writer or by other people that have knowledge in the field, the four-eyed principle. It is also important that the writer delivers relevant metadata regarding the book (title, publication date, publisher, topic, …) so that the library can be built.
The second part is building the library based on the relevant metadata. One can take the determined critical documentation for business continuity as a starting point. If we go back to the library metaphor the obvious way to categorize books is alphabetical. However, one can imagine a writer-oriented culture in which certain high valued writers get a separate section in the library. Next to that one could decide to categorize the books based on topics (action, classics, fantasy, horror, …) while maintaining the alphabetic order within each topic. As shown, there is no right or wrong in building the library, although the choices made must be clear. What we can tell is that the more structured, detailed, and consistent the library is built, the easier it becomes to find the book you were looking for later on.
MareVisie actively supports its clients to centralize all technical documentation within their technical departments. The starting point was that most information was controlled by the individual employee. This could be in its mailbox or on a private hard disk, in paper form on one’s desk, or as knowledge in the employee’s head. As the organization grows, and more and more stakeholders demand technical information, the need for a centralized database became an urgency. To build such a system metadata must be added to the documents before they enter the database and individuals that deliver information should learn to think in these metadata characteristics.
We support the client to select relevant metadata, make the first steps in building the database, and we act as a gatekeeper / custodian when information is added or retrieved. This is Document management at its finest!