Blogs

The assessment of information is not a new topic, but the explosion of content makes it more urgent.

It's time to determine the value of each piece of information and know where that value lies. 

Without going into detail on the discussion of assessing the value of information, it is probably worth reminding the "taxonomy" of the concept of information value. 

First there is the "business value". It represents the relevance of information and its added value in business processes (marketing, sales, finance, HR, etc. ..) 

It also has the "legal value" of information which regards information only as an element of protection of those who produced it and / or issued (litigation,compliance issues, etc.). 

Finally there is the "heritage value" of information that determine the interest of conservation of this information for its contribution to History, a topic understanding, etc.

Data and documents, what differences? 

In the digital world, data belong to the structured world while documents are unstructured data even if they appear as formatted reports or lists. 

Obviously, this difference is critical from the standpoint of technical management  but also in the evaluation and use of an information made of more than 80% of unstructured content! 

For a number of information, there is also a difference which lies in the value given to the representation, the formatting and the context of the creation and the use of information. 

Indeed, under the protection of consumers that we are, there is no question that the paper invoice or statement as we receive online or by post carries value.

But, for the supplier, it is only a formatted representation (on paper) of data managed in its systems.

In this case, what about the importance of shape regarding the value?

A reality much more complex 

It is likely that the importance of shaping and representation of information (mainly for legal reasons) is a reality with which ECM solutions will deal for a long time. 

But it is easy to store and maintain a document produced in an automated document factory or scanned in contexts of dematerialization, this is not true for all content that organizations want to tap capital. 

Indeed, if the standard formats (PDF/A for example) are easy to implement for the formatted documents, their use becomes even more complex for documents such emails not to mention audio and video content, or content generated by mobile applications ! 

What Do You Think Is The Next Big Thing for Information Management? 

Are METADATA a part of the answer? 

How to put in a "structured world" and for the benefit of the organization, more and more of unstructured content ? 

The availability of tons of  applications on cell phones and mobile devices, new services, information and content curation apps, speedy business intelligence development tools and new services, content master classification and federated repositories are all realities.

With the exploding volumes, it  will push for industrialization and standardization of process information primarily organized on the use of structured data. 

Beyond the technical answers, it is mainly to implement assessment processes information (in terms of business value, legal and / or heritage) through relevant METADATA sets, but also use and exchange of CONTENT through channels and responsive services. 

The graphical representation of information is less critical for business, it depends on the support (smartphone, iPad, intanet, GUI application, etc..) but it's still today an answer to compliance and litigation issues (protection against certain risks). 

But the ultimate issue of dematerialization is it not to consider the value of information regardless of its shaping ?