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 work
in 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. The
information 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 critical
information 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 with
which 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 what
information 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 company’s 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 and
locally. Businesses operate within an industry and the key aspect of a business firms’
environment 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 in
industries, 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
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 organizational
information 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 and
financial 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 aim
is 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 when
interpreting them into business necessities.

In business environment, the strategic decision makers need mostly external information that is
broad 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 is
necessary 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)

External Sources Broad Integrated upcoming

Strategic
ssS

Tactical

Operational

Internal sources detailed specific past

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

Types of information

Types of information can further be categorized as Financial and Non Financial or descriptive,
Business intelligence, case studies, statistical and historical information. Whilst financial
information can be internal company financial statements and bottom line information, and also
external financial data such as currency rates, share price movements, share/capital market
trends, investments, Descriptive information will range from text books to articles carrying
various theories and research findings. Statistical information conveys demographic data.

Business intelligence (BI) on the other hand brings out analyses of situations from information
when applied in certain contexts to determine the realistic situation after processed in a
methodological manner, integrating external information into internal information. It is also a
form of refined knowledge on a certain topic or area with or without usage of technology. BI can
be considered an important tool for strategic decision making.

Types of BI

Types of BI can be Social intelligence, Market intelligence, Competitor intelligence, Product

intelligence, Technological and environment intelligence that can predict changes in the industry
foe rational management of a company or business entity

Sources of Business Information.

Source of information can be institutional or non institutional. An institute can be a place , for
(eg. The Export Development Board, Industrial Development Board), where people can gather
information by talking to the personnel working in specific areas could bring awareness to
business oriented projects. Those institutional publications can offer required information.

Non institutional sources vary from books, directories journals, newspapers, databases to annual
reports, company and research reports, company brochures market reports and intelligence
reports, Government publications, regulatory publications .

The sources are in many formats such as print, electronic and other multimedia but all are
becoming very much integrated having unique advantages over the other, depending on its
application. The sources can also be traditional source and non traditional sources.

The institutional/academic libraries are main places of serving with sources as well as serving as
sources of information.
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 users
have 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: Techniques for analyzing industries and competitors.
New York: Free press.

Shivanthi Weerasinghe

Business Information - 520