Value & Importance of Information

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• Understand that information is a commodity and as such, can have a monetary value, the level of which depends on its accuracy, its potential use and its particular intended use.

• Describe the overheads involved in ensuring that information is up-to-date and of use to an organisation/individual.

Importance

• Information has become a valuable resource, just as much as capital infrastructure and people. Name some organisations where the collection of data is essential for their continued running?

• Information is collected on any amount of different items and used by managers to make strategic decisions concerning the organisation.

• Can you think of a situation where information was not used wisely and an organisation has suffered the consequences?

Examples

• Clico

• Diagnose with incorrect illness

• Add your experiences

Importance of Information• Information technology is fundamental to the success of any

business• The information that is collected and/or assembled in any

business is as valuable a resource as capital or people• Information may cover:

– Market trends– Buying preferences– Customer profiles

• It may be processed, summarised, and analysed by computers before being used by managers as the basis for decision-making

• As discussed earlier, information must be:– Accurate– Complete– Up-to-date

The Value of Information

• How does the following information have value:– a list of current account customers whose

account have a large credit balance,– a list of customers who have bought new cars

from a garage over the past three months,– an on-line database on CD ROM of all the

post-codes in the UK,– a list of credit card customers who have not

kept their accounts in order (late payers etc).

Information as a Commodity• Have you or your family been targetted for

particular mail advertisements?– Consider: making a credit card purchase, a

mail order purchase, a telephone order purchase, information about you and the product you buy goes into a database. The information can be used to target you with advertisements on products that you are most likely to buy!

• Why may you get advertisements from many other different organisations?

Usefulness of Data

• Companies that sell products by mail order need to keep up-to-date lists of name and addresses of customers who may be interested in making a purchase. This data is very valuable and can be sold to other ‘like’ companies. What would make this list become of little value?

• What could be added to the data so that it can be kept up-to-date?

• Is the cost of keeping data up-to-date, accurate, and complete worthwhile to the company?

Overheads

• Collecting the data

• Data conversion / input into a database

• Frequency of collection / up to date

• Control, protection and secrecy

• Validation checks and manual entry

• Frequency of processing

• Output lists, use of paper and ink.

Quality Of Data

• To be useful, data must be:– Accurate– Up-to-date– Complete

• How can data held be accurate?• How can data be kept up-to-date?• How can it be known that data is complete?• Data held by organisations has been collected

using time and money, how can they know that the data collected will be relevant tomorrow?

• Would it be sensible to date stamp every entry?

The benefits of ICT

• Speed of processing• Vast storage capacity• Ability to search and combine data in many

different ways• Instant response• Accurate results• Communication• Improved company image

Limitations of ICT• New systems nearly always have some drawbacks.

These could include:– Job losses among employees– New or redesigned accommodation may be needed for

the setup– Faults in the software may mean the new system does

not work as planned– Inadequate hardware may lead to bottlenecks in the flow

of data around an organisation– Hard to extract information in the right form– Output only as good as input

• (GIGO – Garbage In Garbage Out) **important jargon