Point of View

People.  Technology.  Information.  Organizations will typically focus solution strategies and investments on one of these three key organizational elements.

• Training user will accomplish little if the organization infrastructure does not support an atmosphere of information sharing and collaboration. 
• New and improved systems and ever-greater access to data will prove fruitless if the information is poorly designed or inaccessible.
• Improving the quality of an organization’s information relies on the synthesis between people, their technology tools, and their ability to effectively develop, disseminate, and use the information they create.

The most effective solution will find a way to maximize the return on investment in People, Technology, and Information. For years, companies have been throwing technology at workers and urging people to “work smarter!”  As it turns out, technology can get an organization started, but can take an organization only so far.

Information that is inconsistent and poorly organized poses another problem to users.  Users are driven to access information by an immediate need to answer a question or solve a problem.  Their chief goal is ease of accessibility—“How quickly can I find the information?”  Anyone who has ever initiated a search on the Web or local area network knows that often retrieving information—even defining the parameters of your search—can be the most difficult challenge a user faces.

The ultimate challenge is using the information—interpreting, determining the purpose, learning from, or acting on the information.  When information is unclear, inaccurate, or incomplete, users must often

• wade through extraneous information to find the information they are searching for.reinterpret information for their own purposes or clarify unclear information before they can use it.
• make assumptions based on incomplete information, or gather additional information to fill gaps in content.

We are now moving rapidly into the latest—and what many business strategists term the most important—wave in the information revolution:  the age of connectivity.

An organization initially transformed by the desktop computer is now evolving into an entirely new entity—a virtual organization extending beyond the physical aspects of the traditional organization, where people communicate electronically, using universal, open standards.  Collaborative work practices, Web conferencing, cyber-teaming—organizations are having to build flexibility and modularity into their communications strategies to keep pace with this ever-increasing rate of change.

Wireless technology and security implementation is part of the solution.  Access to data is controlled by having a robust authentication mechanism, setting permissions on data objects, encrypting files, and protecting data during transport.

When it comes to security, every IT manager knows that each level of the IT level needs security measures in place-from network to servers to the applications to the user systems to the access control procedures.  Compliance requires much the same.  Many of the regulatory requirements that companies must manage and track key corporate documents and records.  The main goal is to effectively manage and track the creation, sharing and archiving of documents and content within an organization.  And again, to access controlled data by having a robust authentication mechanism, setting permissions on data objects, encrypting files, and protecting data during transport.