Information Systems Overload Aka How to Streamline Your Office
One of the biggest problems businesses face is what I like to term information systems overload where a business has so many systems that perform a number of critical tasks but none of them talk to each other.
We have all been there, perhaps a business you know or work for has some information saved in an excel spreadsheet, some more information is saved in a piece of propierty software and another piece of important information is saved in a word file on someones computer somewhere.
It's all very important information and is critical to running the business but how the information is stored is almost thought of as an afterthought.
How good would it be to be able to get all these systems to talk to each other automatically? No more manual processes such as saving files, sending emails to other workers to check on the status of work done and no more errors due to human intervention.
This may sound like the holy grail of the office in terms of office productivity but such a facility is readily available; It's called information systems management.
The key concept is to streamline all of your information systems and share information between them automatically with no or very little user intervention.
Doing this removes the problems of human / user error and also ensures that all information is readily available when and where you want it.
No more waiting for Jill to return to the office so you can ask her to run a report, open a file or follow up on an email as an example.
Perhaps your company consumes information from a third party.
This information may be in the form of emails that you receive from your website or pehaps it is product information from your supplier with the latest prices and descriptions.
You may need this information placed on your website immediately after removing items that you do not have in stock or you may need to respond the website query whilst at the same time adding a new entry into your companies customer relationship management system.
Unfortunately, many businesses have manual processes in place in order to deal with situations such as these.
The problem with manual processes when dealing with information management is that not only do manual systems cause delays they are prone to user error.
A properly implemented information management system can ensure that not only is information shared between relevant systems but also ensure that this information is dealt with on time and afforded a much better accuracy compared to systems based on human intervention.
We have all been there, perhaps a business you know or work for has some information saved in an excel spreadsheet, some more information is saved in a piece of propierty software and another piece of important information is saved in a word file on someones computer somewhere.
It's all very important information and is critical to running the business but how the information is stored is almost thought of as an afterthought.
How good would it be to be able to get all these systems to talk to each other automatically? No more manual processes such as saving files, sending emails to other workers to check on the status of work done and no more errors due to human intervention.
This may sound like the holy grail of the office in terms of office productivity but such a facility is readily available; It's called information systems management.
The key concept is to streamline all of your information systems and share information between them automatically with no or very little user intervention.
Doing this removes the problems of human / user error and also ensures that all information is readily available when and where you want it.
No more waiting for Jill to return to the office so you can ask her to run a report, open a file or follow up on an email as an example.
Perhaps your company consumes information from a third party.
This information may be in the form of emails that you receive from your website or pehaps it is product information from your supplier with the latest prices and descriptions.
You may need this information placed on your website immediately after removing items that you do not have in stock or you may need to respond the website query whilst at the same time adding a new entry into your companies customer relationship management system.
Unfortunately, many businesses have manual processes in place in order to deal with situations such as these.
The problem with manual processes when dealing with information management is that not only do manual systems cause delays they are prone to user error.
A properly implemented information management system can ensure that not only is information shared between relevant systems but also ensure that this information is dealt with on time and afforded a much better accuracy compared to systems based on human intervention.
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