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Business Information -520

Overview

Information

Information not only plays an important role in business and general activities, it also has now

become a critical component in decision making processes. It is important both as a commodity

and as a resource.Information definitely is a resource for today's companies, because they workin a complex environment and in order to adjust to new circumstances they need knowledge

about what is happening; about your company and its environment and then adjust to the

changes it is necessary to look at the information needs and uses in the processes. Theinformation needs vary often so the information process needs to be organised . Information is a

resource, but not automatically. There must be a bigger context in order to gain from the

information. Then it can turn into a commodity because, there will be a demand for criticalinformation to gain a competitive edge at a cost.

Information that belongs to the Information Science field is the assemblage of data that becomes

information for specific purposes and then forms as knowledge of people. So information is data

that has been processed that becomes meaningful to the person who receives or acquires it.

Information is vast and growing at an increasingly rapid rate at the same time, the speed withwhich information can be accessed also increases due to the evolving Information and

Communication Technology tools. However, the quality of information, relevancy and

correctness should not be compromised in order to access information at a fast rate.

Therefore Information out put needs to be managed. Information management is to identify whatinformation is needed, how it should be acquired and gathered, organized and stored and

organized to retrieve or disseminate as the case maybe.

Information is to maximize the usefulness of a companys information resources, and assess the

value when making important decisions. In the context of businesses,Business information is

an approach for processing and enriching the essential information necessary for business.

Business Information

Business itself is a complex discipline (Lavin,1995); vulnerable to rapid changes globally andlocally. Businesses operate within an industry and the key aspect of a business firmsenvironment is the industry or industries within which they compete. (Porter,1998). The industry

on the other hand comprises of group of firms producing products that are close substitutes for

each other (Porter,1998). Therefore, information on industries, the companies operating inindustries, products and services, competitors, markets, macro economy, regulatory and external

financial information and a host of others related to the businesses become information needed

for the work of businesses. Such External Information will serve for varied purposes for varied

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companies. External Information is strategic information, while Internal Information an

important factor where business information is concerned is operational information. It consists

of Production information, Human Resources, Internal Financial Information and organizationalinformation and so on. External of strategic information is highly necessary for production

planning, marketing, benchmarking and often traced by the top management. Operational

information is necessary for such factors as measuring production efficiency, standardization andfinancial planning.

The goal of business information is to provide those concerned with the businesses, or managers

of companies with the basis of knowledge about the external environment in which it operates

and about the internal work of the organization. So when accessing information one primary aimis to generate knowledge that will help in reducing uncertainty as much as possible. Information

should consist of Hard, economic and deterministic information. There will be how ever

instances where, anecdotal and intuitive information maybe needed, but care must be taken wheninterpreting them into business necessities.

In business environment, the strategic decision makers need mostly external information that isbroad and enriched , always anticipating new events, to lead the company to a progression. On

the other hand at an operational level, more detailed, past information to base future decisions isnecessary in order to implement short term activities. At the tactical level, information from both

these aspects are gathered for the puropose of using the resources of a company in a cost

effective way. (See figure 1)

Levels of Business information/intelligence (McGonagle, and Vella 1996)

External Sources Broad Integrated upcoming

Strategic

ssS

Tactical

Operational

Internal sources detailed specific past

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Business Information users

Business information users and seekers comprise of those who actively involved in businesses

as well as students, consultants, advisors, and may be even the layperson. How ever these usershave different needs and purposes. So those professionals offering the services of business

information such as information officers, Librarians and Documentalists should be able to

access, organize, design, market and deliver the information to the right person at the right time,integrating with their information behaviour.

List of References

Lavin, M.R. (1995) . Improving the quality of business reference services. The Reference

Librarian, 48, 71-98

McGonagle, J.J. and Vella, C.M. (2002). A case for competitive intelligence.Information

Management Journal 36(4): 35-40

Porter, M.E.(1998). Competitive strategy: Techniquesfor analyzing industries and competitors.

New York: Free press.

Shivanthi Weerasinghe

Business Information - 520