business information
Business Information

 Data is the raw material for data processing. Data relate to facts, events and transaction and so forth.
Information is data has been processed in such a way as to be meaningful to person who receives it. Information is anything that is communicated.

Qualities of good information

Good information should be relevant, complete, accurate, clear, it should inspire confidence, it should be appropriately communicated, its volume should be manageable, it should be timely and its cost should be less than the benefits it provides.

Lets look at those qualities in more details.

  1. Relevance: Information must be relevant to the purpose for which a manager wants to use it. In practice, far too many reports fail to 'keep to the point' and contain irrelevant paragraphs which only annoy the managers reading them.
  2. completeness: An information user should have all the information he or she needs to do their job properly. If he or she does not have a complete picture of the situation, they might well make bad decisions
  3. Accuracy: Information should obviously be accurate because using incorrect information could have serious and damaging consequences. However, information should only be accurate enough for its purpose and there is no need to go into unnecessary detail for pointless accuracy.
  4. Clarity: Information must be clear to the user. If the users does not understand it properly they cannot use it properly. Lack of clarity is one of the causes of a breakdown in communication. It is therefore important to choose the most appropriate presentation medium or channel of communication.
  5. Confidence: Information must be trusted by the managers who are expected to use it. However not all information is certain. some information has to be certain, especially operating information, for example, related to a production process. Strategic information, especially relating to the environment, is uncertain. However, if the assumptions underlying it are clearly stated, this might enhance the confidence with which the information is perceived.
  6. Communication: Within any organisation, individuals are given the authority to do certain tasks, and they must be given the information they need to do them. An office manager might be made responsible for controlling expenditures in the office, and given a budget limit for the year. As the year progresses, the manager might try to keep expenditure in check but unless they are told throughout the year what is the current total expenditure to date, they will find it difficult to judge whether they are keeping within budget or not.
  7. Volume: There are physical and mental limitations to what a person can read, absorb and understand properly before taking action. An enormous mountain of information, even if it is all relevant, cannot be handled. Reports to management must therefore be clear and concise and in many systems, control action works basically on the 'exception' principle.
  8. Timing: Information which is not available until after a decision is made will be useful only for comparisons and longer-term control, and may serve no purpose even then. Information prepared too frequently can be a serious disadvantage. If, for example, a decision is taken at a monthly meeting about a certain aspect of a company's operations, information to make the decision is only required once a month, and weekly reports would be a time-consuming waste of effort.
  9. Channel of communication: There are occasions when using one particular method of communication will be better than others. For example, job vacancies should be announced in a medium where they will be brought to the attention of the people most likely to be interested. The channel of communication will be brought to the attention of the people most likely to be interested. The channel of communication might be the company's in-house journal, a national or local newspaper, a professional magazine, a job center or school careers office. Some internal memoranda may be better sent by 'electronic mail'. Some information is best communicated informally by telephone or word-of-mouth, whereas other information ought to be formally communicated in writing or figures.
  10. Cost: Information should have some value, otherwise it would not be worth the cost of collecting and filing it. The benefits obtainable from the information must also exceed the cost of acquiring it. and enever management is trying to decide whether or not to prodcue information for a particular purpose (for example wehter to computerise an operation or to build a financial planning model) a cost/benefit study ought to be made.
The successful management of any organisation depends on information: non-profit seeking organisations such as charities, clubs and local authorities need information for decision making and for reporting result of their activities just as multi-nationals do.

Most organisations require the following types of information
  • Financial
  • Non-financial
  • A combination of financial and non-financial information.
accuracy appropriately communicated channel of communication clarity completeness cost data information inspire confidence meaningful relevance timely timing volume

The defination of data and information for business management

business information
Business Information

 Data is the raw material for data processing. Data relate to facts, events and transaction and so forth.
Information is data has been processed in such a way as to be meaningful to person who receives it. Information is anything that is communicated.

Qualities of good information

Good information should be relevant, complete, accurate, clear, it should inspire confidence, it should be appropriately communicated, its volume should be manageable, it should be timely and its cost should be less than the benefits it provides.

Lets look at those qualities in more details.

  1. Relevance: Information must be relevant to the purpose for which a manager wants to use it. In practice, far too many reports fail to 'keep to the point' and contain irrelevant paragraphs which only annoy the managers reading them.
  2. completeness: An information user should have all the information he or she needs to do their job properly. If he or she does not have a complete picture of the situation, they might well make bad decisions
  3. Accuracy: Information should obviously be accurate because using incorrect information could have serious and damaging consequences. However, information should only be accurate enough for its purpose and there is no need to go into unnecessary detail for pointless accuracy.
  4. Clarity: Information must be clear to the user. If the users does not understand it properly they cannot use it properly. Lack of clarity is one of the causes of a breakdown in communication. It is therefore important to choose the most appropriate presentation medium or channel of communication.
  5. Confidence: Information must be trusted by the managers who are expected to use it. However not all information is certain. some information has to be certain, especially operating information, for example, related to a production process. Strategic information, especially relating to the environment, is uncertain. However, if the assumptions underlying it are clearly stated, this might enhance the confidence with which the information is perceived.
  6. Communication: Within any organisation, individuals are given the authority to do certain tasks, and they must be given the information they need to do them. An office manager might be made responsible for controlling expenditures in the office, and given a budget limit for the year. As the year progresses, the manager might try to keep expenditure in check but unless they are told throughout the year what is the current total expenditure to date, they will find it difficult to judge whether they are keeping within budget or not.
  7. Volume: There are physical and mental limitations to what a person can read, absorb and understand properly before taking action. An enormous mountain of information, even if it is all relevant, cannot be handled. Reports to management must therefore be clear and concise and in many systems, control action works basically on the 'exception' principle.
  8. Timing: Information which is not available until after a decision is made will be useful only for comparisons and longer-term control, and may serve no purpose even then. Information prepared too frequently can be a serious disadvantage. If, for example, a decision is taken at a monthly meeting about a certain aspect of a company's operations, information to make the decision is only required once a month, and weekly reports would be a time-consuming waste of effort.
  9. Channel of communication: There are occasions when using one particular method of communication will be better than others. For example, job vacancies should be announced in a medium where they will be brought to the attention of the people most likely to be interested. The channel of communication will be brought to the attention of the people most likely to be interested. The channel of communication might be the company's in-house journal, a national or local newspaper, a professional magazine, a job center or school careers office. Some internal memoranda may be better sent by 'electronic mail'. Some information is best communicated informally by telephone or word-of-mouth, whereas other information ought to be formally communicated in writing or figures.
  10. Cost: Information should have some value, otherwise it would not be worth the cost of collecting and filing it. The benefits obtainable from the information must also exceed the cost of acquiring it. and enever management is trying to decide whether or not to prodcue information for a particular purpose (for example wehter to computerise an operation or to build a financial planning model) a cost/benefit study ought to be made.
The successful management of any organisation depends on information: non-profit seeking organisations such as charities, clubs and local authorities need information for decision making and for reporting result of their activities just as multi-nationals do.

Most organisations require the following types of information
  • Financial
  • Non-financial
  • A combination of financial and non-financial information.

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