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Making Informed Decisions

Information could mean different things to different people in different contexts. However, in an organizational context, it means only one thing—a tool for decision making. Organizational leaders/managers are confronted with several situations that call for speedy decision making. A structured approach to information management helps managers make informed decisions in such situations.

So, what is information management?

A business-oriented organization has to serve the interests of its stakeholders—customers, shareholders, employees, suppliers and society at large—while creating more value for each one of them. A common need for all these stakeholders is information, albeit to varying degrees. Collating, processing, structuring and disseminating such information form the basis of information management.

Information management happens at two levels. At the first level, information is fed into the organizational system. With rapid proliferation of computers, information availability is no longer at a premium. What is at a premium though is the availability of relevant information, which is where information management finds relevance.

The second level of information management happens within the organizational system where information flow between various processes needs to be managed and disseminated both for internal use and customer benefit. Computer based information systems maybe of little or no help in such information management. Nevertheless, information at higher abstraction levels would make it easier for strategic managers to take decisions that would have long-term impact on the organization.

Information management leads us to the next logical step of knowledge management. Relevant information put to specific use within an organization constitutes knowledge and knowledge management is where lot of action is being witnessed these days. This is borne out of the realization that retaining the 'knowledge capital of organizational resources and processes is a sure way to be competitive.

As technical communicators and information developers what do all these mean to us?
We technical communicators are in a unique position within an organization that lets us see the big picture and think from an organizational perspective. Being at the interface of developer and customer groups lets us act as representatives of both parties and helps us contribute better to the organizational goals. On the information management front, we facilitate the information creation, processing and dissemination in all forms and manage information processes. In effect we have a major say in organizational decision making.

— Vinay Babu, Editor-Indus

In This Issue

The Power of One – An Aspiring Lone-Writer – Nancy Sequeira
Ten Tips to Grow Your Writing Career: A Manager’s Perspective – Francisco Abedrabbo
Interview: Ashvin Rekhade – Geeta Garud
Ecological diversity: a parable for technical communicators – Geoff Hart
Managing Technical Reviews – Divya Upadhyay
Embedded User Assistance: The Emerging Help Technology – Debarshi Gupta Biswas
Free Tools for Documentation – Samartha Vasishta
Information Consumers: Analysis of Tendencies and Solutions – Sameer Suryakant Kulkarni

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