Information management needs to get smarter

While information has historically been used in a means-to-an-end fashion, that situation is changing -- rapidly, says expert Steve Weissman of Holly Group.

Traditionally, information was deployed for a transaction, then mentally discarded; today, information management is becoming the competitive edge for businesses in creating products, understanding customers, making buying decisions and a laundry list of action items.

Using information intelligently has cropped up as one of the major themes at AIIM 2014 in Orlando, Fla., this week. Companies have realized that it's no longer enough to amass, manage, archive and destroy information. They now have to analyze it for trends, insight and direction on day-to-day business decisions.

"The whole point of having information is to do something with it," Weissman said. "Just capture, just collection is nice, but what happens next? You've presumably gathered it to do something with it: to make a decision, to buy something. Treating information as an asset … this is something that is really, really important to your organization. What is the point of collecting it if it just sits there?"

Stay tuned for more on the changing role of information and the maturation of records management in our AIIM 2014 conference coverage package.

For more, check out SearchContentManagement's coverage of the event. You can also follow the information management conversation at #AIIM14 and #infochaos.