Spero Consulting

Mak­ing Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy Work for You…Finally

We’re not sure if our vague title is a good one because regard­less of the for­mal­ity of their other “infor­ma­tion” sys­tems, every firm and orga­ni­za­tion already has at least one rel­a­tively inex­pen­sive, web-​based, man­age­ment infor­ma­tion sys­tem (MIS). That sys­tem is e-​mail, includ­ing the mes­sages and the myr­iad of hideous, incon­ve­nient, and awk­ward Word, Excel, and pdf doc­u­ments that are so often attached to said messages.

The low cost of e-​mail-​as-​information-​system isn’t the issue. At issue, is whether greater ben­e­fits can be real­ized by using more appro­pri­ate web appli­ca­tions that can be imple­mented at very low mar­ginal cost: both finan­cial and human-​effort-​related costs. The systems/​applications are cheap and easy-​to-​learn.

E-​mail as the Cen­tral Ner­vous System

It’s our con­tention that most man­agers, includ­ing “IT” man­agers, don’t rec­og­nize e-​mail for what it is.

It is the metaphor­i­cal cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem of their firms and orga­ni­za­tions. (We have in mind the somatic ner­vous sys­tem, whereas trans­ac­tion pro­cess­ing and data-​processing, in gen­eral, remind us of the auto­nomic ner­vous sys­tem.)

With­out that recog­ni­tion of e-mail’s cru­cial role, there is no rea­son to search for a sub­sti­tute that is supe­rior at cer­tain infor­ma­tion pro­cess­ing, trans­mis­sion, reten­tion, and retrieval func­tions. (Oh well, we guess we’ll con­sider it our lit­tle secret, share it with that hand­ful of peo­ple who read blogs on the inter­net, and con­tinue to profit from that realization.)

We ask: if senior man­agers both in and out of “IT” did rec­og­nize the true use of their firms’ e-​mail sys­tems, how would they jus­tify silly, fear-​of-​litigation-​based, 60-​day e-​mail “reten­tion” poli­cies? We don’t think that they would. In which case, they might stop toss­ing the prover­bial baby with the bathwater.

By that we mean senior man­agers under-​estimate or com­pletely ignore the long-​term ben­e­fits of reten­tion because (1) the seem­ingly pri­vate, per­son­al­ized nature of mail, (2) the form of those mes­sages obscures their infor­ma­tional con­tent, or (3) they may con­clude that the attach­ments are saved; so, what’s to lose.

We argue that vol­umes of qual­i­ta­tive infor­ma­tion, includ­ing valu­able insti­tu­tional details and his­to­ries and assump­tions, are lost when mes­sages are deleted or when Word doc­u­ments are deleted or purged when an employee quits, is fired or is trans­ferred or when oxymoronically-​named “reten­tion” poli­cies are ruth­lessly applied to mes­sages on a mail server.

No, we don’t think that would hap­pen if those mes­sages were viewed for what they are: an inel­e­gant, qual­i­ta­tive infor­ma­tion sys­tem and data­base, rather than mere correspondence.

Of course, almost all orga­ni­za­tions – par­tic­u­larly large, multi-​locational ones – have other sys­tems that col­lect and trans­mit enor­mous sets of data over the inter­net. Some­times those sys­tems trans­mit infor­ma­tion, too, but trans­mis­sion of valu­able infor­ma­tion is prob­a­bly a much smaller activ­ity than most assume). In that sense, we would dis­agree with those who argue that mod­ern times present some dan­ger of infor­ma­tion over­load, because there is rarely infor­ma­tion overload, but with­out a bit of expe­ri­ence and a clear thought-​process and a bit of self-​confidence, it is quite easy to become over­whelmed with irrel­e­vant data, (or so we’re told). That “over­load” that some folks face is sim­i­lar the old adage about “not see­ing the for­est because of the trees.” With respect to irrel­e­vant data, it’s more of an issue of not being able to see the beau­ti­ful maple for­est because of all the weed sumac trees.

To be clear, there’s a time and place for and value to data pro­cess­ing, but too often folks – who should know bet­ter – con­flate data pro­cess­ing sys­tems and infor­ma­tion sys­tems. In fact, most firms don’t refer to data pro­cess­ing as “data pro­cess­ing” any­more – many call it “infor­ma­tion tech­nol­ogy” or “IT” or some such thing. Our point is that not all data and records are informative. In fact, we would argue that most records in such mis­named “infor­ma­tion sys­tems” are irrel­e­vant for the typ­i­cal and impor­tant oper­at­ing and invest­ment deci­sions that mid­dle– and senior man­agers make. (In our expe­ri­ence, that infor­ma­tion comes from e-​mails and attach­ments and not through either silly, eso­teric dash­boards or the mass of details recorded via mil­lions of transactions.)

Again, data-​processing is valu­able for a vari­ety of pur­poses, pri­mar­ily record-​keeping and book-​keeping pur­poses, but “pro­cess­ing” data doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily con­vert it to infor­ma­tion – if it is never con­sid­ered as a fac­tor in a deci­sion. (One our pet peeves involves that fact that few sys­tems design­ers begin their projects by ask­ing: what deci­sions do you make and what deci­sions could you make (or make bet­ter) with more refined information?”

We men­tion data pro­cess­ing because we think that if a man­ager can’t dis­tin­guish between data-​processing pro­ce­dures from infor­ma­tion sets and sys­tems, then it likely that such a per­son may also ignore the impor­tance of e-​mail as the cen­tral infor­ma­tion sys­tem because the con­tent of those mes­sages aren’t viewed for what they are: fields and records in a large, unwieldy, and self-​deleting data­base. (Self-​deleting where such reten­tion poli­cies exist.)

We are very inter­ested in help­ing firms and orga­ni­za­tions make opti­mal deci­sions with the “opti­mal amount” of rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion, and we’re espe­cially inter­ested in devel­op­ing con­trol sys­tems that sys­tem­atize, facil­i­tate, and moti­vate such decision-​making by sub­or­di­nates. (FYI: in our mind, infor­ma­tion sys­tems are a type of con­trol sys­tem. When they are well-​designed, they help orga­ni­za­tions accom­plish their goals; so, they meet our def­i­n­i­tion of con­trol. Also, note that we put “opti­mal amount” in scare quotes because that deter­mi­na­tion of opti­mal, in and of itself, is a very sub­tle issue that has strate­gic, tac­ti­cal, and oft-​ignored behav­ioral impli­ca­tions.) The cru­cial man­age­ment issue is: when given the organization’s goals and strate­gies and resources and con­straints, what sys­tems – includ­ing infor­ma­tion sys­tems, and mech­a­nisms are avail­able to effi­ciently and con­sis­tently imple­ment those plans to max­i­mize the organization’s long-​term value. Unfor­tu­nately, the MIS por­tion of that prob­lem is often del­e­gated and not prop­erly con­sid­ered, e.g., “I don’t know much about com­put­ers. That’s an IT issue.”

It is also unfor­tu­nate that because e-​mail serves other pur­poses like com­mu­ni­ca­tion to assist with imple­men­ta­tion and coör­di­na­tion of plans, etc., and because it is the default and de facto key man­age­ment infor­ma­tion sys­tem, we con­tend that lit­tle con­sid­er­a­tion is given by any type of man­ager to find­ing “bet­ter” replace­ments for e-mail’s infor­ma­tion trans­mis­sion role, includ­ing the easy stor­age and retrieval of all of the insti­tu­tional knowl­edge and details found in mes­sages sent and received among peers, supe­ri­ors, and subordinates.

But, no wor­ries, we have a solution.

A Bet­ter MIS than E-​mail

That above-​mentioned lack of con­sid­er­a­tion is shame­ful because nowa­days, sur­pris­ingly afford­able, very user-​friendly, open-​source soft­ware and web appli­ca­tions exist that bet­ter serve the MIS purpose.

Those appli­ca­tions allow orga­ni­za­tions of any size to very effi­ciently and effec­tively cre­ate and use internet-​based infor­ma­tion sys­tems, and those surprisingly-​inexpensive meth­ods have the poten­tial – nay, the high prob­a­bil­ity – to pro­vide tremen­dous long-​term benefits.

• The best part is that there is very lit­tle – actu­ally, noth­ing for most employ­ees – to learn. If they can write e-​mails, cre­ate MS Office doc­u­ments, and attach files, they already have the exper­tise that they need to use a dif­fer­ent plat­form. (We’re amused by the fact that it doesn’t seems that most devel­op­ers of those sys­tems appre­ci­ate their use­ful­ness of them as the front-​end of data­bases because they tend not to be employed by large organizations.)

Note: we’re not rec­om­mend­ing the whole­sale elim­i­na­tion of e-​mail. Instead, we rec­om­mend replac­ing it for cer­tain func­tions with web-​based pub­lish­ing sys­tems that, for exam­ple, will auto­mat­i­cally notify intended recip­i­ents that new con­tent is avail­able, which if you think of it, is very sim­i­lar to receiv­ing an e– mail mes­sage. (Here’s one sign your firm may need a dif­fer­ent sys­tem: if impor­tant top­ics gen­er­ate an nearly end­less chain of mes­sages and replies. Those chains should be com­mu­ni­cated and stored out­side of an e-​mail sys­tem but we don’t mean in MS Office-​based doc­u­ments. We mean web-​based pub­lish­ing systems.

• The other best part is that every­thing that employ­ees write or com­ment upon is search­able (by them­selves and oth­ers) because it is stored in a well-​protected, cen­tral­ized, free, open-​source data­base. (We use MySQL to store our musings.) If per­mis­si­ble, that access is imme­di­ate and per­ma­nent. So, what is assumed and dis­cussed today is not lost in the future. That means that insti­tu­tional knowl­edge can be saved and cheaply re-​used thereby mit­i­gat­ing the age-​old prob­lem iden­ti­fied by George San­tayana: “Those who can­not remem­ber the past are con­demned to repeat it.”
• The other best part is that form of the qual­i­ta­tive data and infor­ma­tion and the result­ing data­base is dynamic and adap­tive (and infor­mal) so that infor­ma­tion cre­ators and providers, say, finan­cial ana­lysts or sales­men, can (rather uncon­sciously) add to and change the struc­ture with­out any inter­fer­ence or delay by “IT” depart­ment admin­is­tra­tors. Respon­si­ble users with the cor­rect level of per­mis­sion can re-​categorize con­tent and add new key­words or fields (as eas­ily as they add new “records” that fit exist­ing fields, top­ics, and categories).

Note that the last bul­let is enough to send most “IT” man­agers into apoplexy.

The sad fact that many such “IT” man­agers would never per­mit such evo­lu­tion­ary processes when learn­ing occurs and/​or as the envi­ron­ment changes is the huge oppor­tu­nity cost of their rigid, bureau­cratic nature and processes. (We ask as an aside: how many “IT” folks start projects by ask­ing: “what deci­sions do you make?” or how many con­sider the behav­ioral impli­ca­tions of sys­tem struc­ture and design? How many pro-​actively ask whether infor­ma­tion require­ments have changed with­out prod­ding or requests by oth­ers? Maybe they should write the acronym, “iT” or just plain “T” because in our mind, there is lit­tle empha­sis on pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion – lots of data, to be sure, but not much info.)

Despite our well-​reasoned and con­vinc­ing prose, we’re skep­ti­cal that large, bureau­cratic orga­ni­za­tions would ever con­sider using such excel­lent sys­tems as a replace­ment for some cur­rent func­tions of e-​mail. (So, we’ll focus our mar­ket­ing efforts on small and mid-​sized firms that, with any luck, will grow into intelligently-​managed, prof­itable, grate­ful, and gen­er­ous large firms.)

Obvi­ously, many large orga­ni­za­tions spend mil­lions if not hun­dreds of mil­lions if not bil­lions of dol­lars on data pro­cess­ing, but, again, we don’t data col­lec­tion and trans­ac­tion pro­cess­ing. We mean the actually-​used man­age­ment infor­ma­tion sys­tems, and are we writ­ing about intel­li­gently gen­er­at­ing, sav­ing, and access­ing both qual­i­ta­tive and quan­ti­ta­tive infor­ma­tion. That means mak­ing every word that would have otherwise-​appeared in an erst­while MS Word doc­u­ment is imme­di­ately search­able by any­one (with per­mis­sion) by post­ing it to a cen­tral data­base using a web form/​editor that looks very sim­i­lar to Word. The future is now – if your firm and staff is ready for it.

If fact, the rec­om­mended pro­ce­dures aren’t much dif­fer­ent than writ­ing this post or read­ing this post or search­ing our site or receiv­ing an RSS feed on par­tic­u­lar cat­e­gories or top­ics or tags.

That’s why we see the cap­ture, trans­mis­sion, reten­tion, and retrieval of both stan­dard and non-​standard qual­i­ta­tive infor­ma­tion as a huge ben­e­fit to firms hooked on some­thing as inef­fec­tive as e-​mail.

With inex­pen­sive form-​generation soft­ware and with (auto­mated) scripts, it is quite easy (and cheap) to cap­ture quan­ti­ta­tive infor­ma­tion as well as stan­dard­ized, qual­i­ta­tive infor­ma­tion and data. How inex­pen­sive? You would be amazed!

Con­tact us for more information.

We’ll likely add to this post and con­tinue to revamp it in the near future.

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