When considering your business’s specific needs, keep the following guidelines for effective information management in mind.

Make sure that information is:

Retrievable—Employees must be able to access the information they need to perform their jobs, and they must be able to do so in a timely fashion!
Accurate
Accessible to all the right people—and only the right people
Up to date
Complete
Usable

Set and consistently follow organizational information management practices. Information management doesn’t just happen on its own. Managers must put policies and practices in place and make sure that employees are following them correctly. Two employees working in the accounts payable department, for instance, must have procedures in place to avoid paying the same vendors twice. If one of the employees doesn’t know about the procedure or doesn’t follow it properly, confusion is likely to occur.

Prioritize information management needs according to business needs. What is the most important need facing your business today? Perhaps it’s inventory control. In this case, the first priority of your information management program should be to address inventory. Maybe you need to purchase a new software program or hire an inventory clerk. A new internal email system might be nice, but if it doesn’t address one of your most pressing business needs, it shouldn’t be an information management priority!

Integrate information management throughout the entire organization. Although different departments within a business will have specific information management requirements, the organization as a whole should have a coordinated plan in place to manage information. Departments should be able to communicate with each other easily and share information as needed.

Assign responsibility for information management. A large business often has an entire department devoted solely to information management and technology. Smaller businesses may have just one person in charge—or no one at all. While certain employees may have information management as part of their job descriptions, everyone in the organization is responsible for doing her/his part. When employees follow procedures correctly each time, information management is a much easier task. This may be as simple as remembering to document your time or as complex as keeping records for a year-long research project.