Strategic Information Management: A Practitioner's Guide

摘要

After an introduction, the main body of the book is split into ten chapters. Chapter 1, Strategic awareness, emphasises the importance of strategy for all modern organisations that seek to succeed in the global economy. The reader is given an overview of strategy, its definition and an explanation of what is involved in strategic planning. The author acknowledges that various strategic tools and frameworks exist and she selects SWOT, STEEPLE, Porter's Five Forces and Scenario analyses as the most common tools and frameworks to describe. Webb concludes the chapter with a section that shows the importance of strategic awareness for information professionals if they are to be forward thinking for success whether in the private or the public sector. Chapter 2, Defining information management, starts with the development of information management (IM). It traces the history of IM from the cuneiform scripts of Syria that dates back to about 2300 BC, the libraries of antiquity such as at Alexandria in 3 BC, through to the emergence of IM as a discipline in the 1990s with organisational initiatives such as quality circles (QCs), total quality management (TQM) and business process re-engineering (BPR). The chapter then goes on to define IM and places it in between data and knowledge at the two extremes of a continuum. Customer relationship management (CRM) among other modern IM initiatives are discussed. The significant role of technology in good IM is also explained. This is followed by the description of the purpose of IM and its critical success factors.