Strategic Planning Needs the Right Information

Introduction

One significant problem is the differences in the way the term ‘information’ is used by people. This is often aggravated by a lack of understanding that what is considered to be information at one level of the organisation may only be data at a more senior level. This creates an imperative to determine what ‘information’ is required to drive the organisation effectively, at the strategic level of the organisation. The creation of an information map detailing what information is required and where it is likely to be obtained is a very useful tool to guide the information management project in gathering the requisite information.

To better understand the research and analysis functions it is essential to understand what is meant be the term ‘information’. The terms data and information are often used interchangeably, and because the business research and analysis investigation is of the strategic situation, it is also necessary to add the idea of knowledge and the way it adds context to the idea of information.

In the search for the information that is going to help the planners develop the business effectively, there is a problem in the differences in the way the term ‘information’ is used by people, and it is often used interchangeably with the term data. The problem can be aggravated by a lack of understanding that what is considered to be information at one level of the organisation may only be considered unuseful data at a more senior level. This creates an imperative to understand what ‘information’ is required to drive the organisation effectively at each major level in the organisation, and the need to determine what ‘information’ will help the planners develop the organisation’s strategy.

As soft data is collected from external sources, it must be evaluated and integrated with any existing information and existing context awareness within the organisation. This will become the new knowledge base describing the potential of the company in the framework of its environment that is to develop a resource-based view (RBV) of the competitive prospects of the company. Because the investigation is for the strategic situation there is a need to investigate the knowledge concept and the way it can add value to gathered information. Finally, it is necessary to decide how to categorise and store information and link it with any existing related data that can turn information into knowledge.

It may be necessary to re-evaluate the current information system to see if there is additional data that can be combined with other business intelligence to add significance to strategic understanding. Thus data from an organisation’s internal systems would be combined with external data for information that may provide a view into future possibilities. As new soft data is collected from external sources, which may consist of rumours, opinions, assumptions and estimates along with firmer data from market and industry reports, it must be evaluated for accuracy and relevance and integrated with any existing information and existing context awareness within the organisation to become the new knowledge base describing the potential of the company in the framework of its environment.

Before collecting vast amounts of data it is useful to understand if a particular data element will lead to information that is required to convey additional understanding of the performance of the business, and perhaps its context within the encompassing business environment. It is necessary to know what information is required for the given purpose before gathering the basic data and the concept of the information map can be an invaluable tool to assist in this process.

When setting out to determine the strategic direction of a business, it is essential to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the internal competencies and capabilities of the organisation, then to perform a comprehensive strategic analysis to understand the business and its surrounding circumstances to determine the opportunities and threats and other potential impacts on the organisation.

The resource-based view (RBV) of competitive advantage provides context for the analysis which is to determine the performance of the business resources in relation to the surrounding environment of customers and competitors. The resource-based view should enable development officers to formulate a balanced set of strategic objectives for change and will be covered in detail in a later chapter.