Information Traction: Find It, Consume It, Apply It (Part 2 of 4)

Finding information has become a huge focus in recent years, simply put, for 2 major reasons:

1. The explosion of information – especially at the end-user level, and
2. the dawning realization that folder structures are no longer an adequate way to file massive amounts of data.

We continue our series about information traction.  In part one of this series, Information Traction: Find It, Consume It, Apply It (Part 1 of 4), we reviewed information traction – a term I have been using to describe a life cycle of how to find, consume, digest, and apply information directly the need at hand. In this article we will look a little more closely at the ability to find information, and its part in information traction a little more closely.

Finding It

Information is useless when filed unless we can, at will, retrieve the information. Electronic document management (EDM) solutions seek to speed the retrieval and accuracy of retrieved information.

Findability has become one of a few very popular buzzwords in the EDM space of late. Peter Morville is credited as coining the phrase, findability, which refers to:

…the quality of being locatable or navigable. At the item level, we can evaluate to what degree a particular object is easy to discover or locate. At the system level, we can analyze how well a physical or digital environment supports navigation and retrieval. (Wikipedia, 2008).

The Google Effect:

Google has revolutionized the way people perceive search, and to its credit, has seemingly made finding information easier than ever. However, there is a key difference between tagging unstructured data for later queries, such as web pages and in-the-wild documents (with Google Desktop), and those documents being structured in more tradition EDM solutions.

Let’s look at an example to help make this a little easier to wrap your head around:

Let’s say you are using an unstructured filing method, whereby you are able to throw your documents anywhere on your desktop computer and later retrieve them utilizing Google Desktop – a client-based software equivalent to Google’s web search engine. In doing so, you are able to open a browser window and type in various search terms and return results that seem to correspond to your need.

However, what happens when you now need to find all documents for a particular client because they want to review their contractual obligations? Can you run a query that will definitively return all needed documents? What if you need them constrained by last activity date or matching a criteria of “approved by John Smith”?

You see, while tagging search tools are effective in certain applications, they have yet to meet the needs of mature businesses looking to ensure findability; these are often best effort, and can not generally be considered comprehensive in scope – which is why more traditional EDM solutions are typically applied in business situations.

Structuring For Success:

The tools for making findability a reality are only a small part of the equation, however. What is most important is the processes and controls we place upon how our information flows throughout our organization.

Software tools by themselves can only make a messy filing room messier – in a digital format. It takes thought and planning to ensure information can be found, digested and applied.

At my company, we have reached a critical point I did not think we would see in a medium-sized business; we have created a position of Information Assurance whose charter responsibility is to ensure indexing information across the company are kept consistent. In other words, this position is responsible for things like ensuring our customer name is consistent between our accounting systems, EDM solution, and SFA/CRM applications.

As I indicated previously, processes and controls are some of the most important things to ensuring information can once again be found once filed. Otherwise you might as well have thrown the document in the trash to begin with – it would’ve been cheaper!

What are some of your successes or failures in findability?

Continuing with our series, our next article will discuss the ability to consume and digest the mountains of data we are finding.

Read the entire series here: Information Traction: Find It, Consume It, Apply It

Ken Stewart’s blog, ChangeForge.com, focuses on the collision between the constantly changing worlds of business and technology. To learn more about Ken, visit his about page. You may also find Ken on FriendFeed, Twitter, and LinkedIn.