What is Information Management ?

According to Wikipedia, Information management (IM) is the collection and management of information from one or more sources and the distribution of that information to one or more audiences. This sometimes involves those who have a stake in, or a right to that information. Management means the organization of and control over the structure, processing and delivery of information.

Get vendor neutral training in technologies and global best practices for managing and utilizing information assets at AIIM's Certificate Training Programs.

AIIM agrees with this definition. Information, as we know it today, includes both electronic and physical information. The organizational structure must be capable of managing this information throughout the information lifecycle regardless of source or format (data, paper documents, electronic documents, audio, social business, video, etc.) for delivery through multiple channels that may include cell phones and web interfaces. Given these criteria, we can then say that the focus of IM is the ability of organizations to capture, manage, preserve, store and deliver the right information to the right people at the right time.

Information management environments are comprised of legacy information resident in line of business applications, Enterprise Content Management (ECM), Electronic Records Management (ERM), Business Process Management (BPM), Email Management (EMM), Information Organization and Access (IOA), Knowledge Management (KM), Web Content Management (WCM), Document Management (DM) and Enterprise 2.0 (E2.0) technology solutions and best practices. Information management requires the adoption and adherence to guiding principles that include:

• Information assets are corporate assets. This principle should be acknowledged or agreed upon across the organization otherwise any business case and support for IM will be weak.
• Information must be made available and shared. Of course not all information is open to anyone, but in principle the sharing of information helps the use and exploitation of corporate knowledge
• Information the organisation needs to keep is managed and retained corporately. In other words the retention and archiving, of information. If you save a document today, you expect it to be secured and still available to you tomorrow

Information management is a corporate responsibility that needs to be addressed and followed from the upper most senior levels of management to the front line worker. Organizations must be held and must hold its employees accountable to capture, manage, store, share, preserve and deliver information appropriately and responsibly. Part of that responsibility lies in training the organization to become familiar with the policies, processes, technologies and best practices in IM. That training is available through AIIM. www.aiim.org/training

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