Developing systems – information management considerations
When developing new corporate systems, it’s essential to understand business information needs, plan for integrations, and ensure the longevity of core information.
Understand business information needs
- Assess operations: Decide which business tasks the new system will help with.
- Critical information: Identify what information is vital for the business, staff, and clients now and in the future.
- Retention requirements: Know how long the business and legal rules say information must be kept.
- Current information review: Look at existing information to see if it meets your needs or if there are gaps.
- Risk mitigation: Identify any potential risks to important information that the new system could create.
Integration planning
- Integration pathways: Plan how the new system will connect with existing systems and prepare for any software changes.
- Data accuracy monitoring: Continually check that the data shared between systems is accurate and complete.
- Cost evaluation: Assess if other alternatives for integrations, like generating reports, workflows to facilitate the routine exporting or taking data snapshots are more cost effective and appropriate.
Stability and longevity of core information
- Long-term needs: Consider how important information will be accessed in the future when planning the new system.
- Dependency management: Identify and manage and system any dependencies that could affect important information over time.
- Migration strategies: Create clear plans for moving important information to the new system.
- Support for legacy systems: Identify those old systems which old systems need long-term support.
- Open data formats: Choose systems that use open formats for easier data management and sharing.
- Outsourced agreements: Make sure any contracts with external companies include responsibilities for managing high value and high-risk information.
The volume of data generated and retained in organisations is growing exponentially. To ensure that data which is no longer required is not needlessly retained, systems should be regularly monitored to identify:
- the information which can be routinely and legally purged the information which needs to be retained through system changes
- strategies which will ensure retention of vital information Failure to plan for data longevity may result in:
- loss of information needed for long-term business purposes
- inadvertent breaches of legal requirements
- unnecessary costs associated with maintenance of legacy systems
- inefficient processes and data duplication resulting from maintenance of multiple legacy systems.
Impacts of system change
- Reevaluate processes: Use the new system as a chance to simplify and improve business processes.
- Understand trade-offs: Be aware that some valuable information may not be collected anymore and consider what this means.
Change management
- Effective training: Provide training to help staff understand the new processes and keep good information management practices.
- Avoid duplication: Prevent data duplication by clearly explaining new business processes and discouraging unofficial methods of collecting and retaining data.
Strategic metadata deployment
- Metadata utility: Determine what metadata (information about the data) is essential for running the business effectively.
- Ongoing relevance: Identify which metadata needs to be carried over when systems change for tracking and accountability.
- Automation opportunities: Automate the creation of metadata wherever possible to save time and reduce errors.
System documentation requirements
- Critical system information: Identify important details about system rules, metadata, validation processes, and workflows.
- Historical context: Keep records of how processes and rules have changed over time.
- Outsourcing considerations: Ensure contracts with external companies allow access to system documentation to avoid future issues.