NFORMATION PROFESSIONALS AND BUSINESS ORGANIZATION

SERVICES REQUIRED OF INFORMATION PROFESSIONALS IN BUSINESS ORGANIZATION
Information professionals are the developmental planners who are vested with measureless responsibilities of planning for the future of the business through the process of identifying, initiating, analyzing, implementing, monitoring, evaluating and review of policies that guides the growth and development of a business organization.
More over, with the doors of much information opened to them, yet ensuring the information that has quality the attribute is one of their key duties. To asses, monitor and improve the operational effectiveness and management’s internal control for optimal and efficient investment operations.
Also to prepare and provide a single frame work through which all information assets and activities within the business organization can be governed. Information professionals provide the optimum capability for meeting the organization objectives in term of functionality and security.
Helping the organization in decision making is another major service required of information professional. This is done because, investment decision is one of the most visible and controversial key decision in an enterprise, as there is need to be an approach for measuring and comparing different alternatives and how they meet business objectives of the enterprise.
To identify non-financial metrics, analyze risk, and to search through governance effectiveness. Information professionals are to link the users with the appropriate information in business organization, so as to give answers to their questions, regardless of its complexity or time it takes. It could be retrospective search services, or current awareness services, or even selective dissemination of information (SDI).
PROBLEMS OF INFORMATION IN BUSINESS ORGANIZATION
Globally today, there are rapid change in technology, and unhurried in information technology. This has negatively affect information and its service delivery. The identification of the long standing problems below has demand urgent solution, as it affects the way we manage and deliver information services.
1. Managing information as technology: Information technology has been operating as an exception since its introduction, because the technology was specialized on. Now that the technology is common, many organizations manage information as technology, which is not. A problem has been identified, where Chief Information Officer (CIO) does not have natural aptitude to manage strategies, system development and technology operation.
2. Management problems exposed by the credit crunch and bankruptcies: 20th century management lays organization and management structures over the business to manage the enterprise arbitrarily, rather than managing the business. Management does not manage important result metrics lie; result value, result volume, result risk, e.t.c. and even important performance indicators. The current financial crisis being experienced today invariably point to the lack of information and management of returns on capital investment, planned and current capital solution worth, capital amortization, new product result value and other information needs that are blocked by 20th century management methods.
3. The alignment problem: Alignment problem is also rampant in the world today. This problem is caused because many businesses are not organized. Alignment problem arise form actual business change in result produced and capital utilized as performance solutions, which remains unidentified and unorganized. The alignment solution attempt to align organization and management structures with each other with nothing to align against.
4. Information complexity: Management at times does not manage the actual business, but manage enterprise using a multitude of organization process, account, performance and other structures laid over the business. The various structures use different names for the same entity, and different definition for the same part of the enterprise. Information systems computerize the various structures producing enormous amount of incomplete, inconsistent, and inaccurate information, and this has caused the exploding information complexity, which is a problem being faced by information managers and the business.
5. Information generally is not organized: Information capital management is not well organized. Accounting is responsible for financial records; information technology may perform data management and record retention. Even with this, there is little management of information for normal application to improve the business. There is structure to relate information with, directly to the business, and no data is collected on the actual business as a related set.
6. The corporate governance problem: Recurring crisis in corporate governance is constant. Governing the corporation is a big problem, because we can not manage corporate business. We over lay a myriad of contrived structures on the business to organize and to manage various entities. Corporate governance structure laid over the business to extract and reconcile information from other overlaid structures.
SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS
• Information should be managed as capital utilized by the business to produce a good result
• Information capital must be managed as tangible assets by those that manage it and must be used for creation and preservation of information.
• Result-performance Management (R-Pm) is one of the main solutions to the current problems, and such future event or crisis.
• Alignment problem may be solved by organizing and managing the business through one integrated result-performance business structure.
• Corporate governance problem may possibly be solved using governance of the actual corporate business.
• Information system acquisition and implementation is justified by the planned result value-added that provides the return on the information and other solution development investment.
• Efforts should be made to ensure that information that is relevant to the business organization is documented, and the review of the existing ones must be done, e.g. directories.