Future Of Productivity: People information

People are better informed

People are better informed, but not because the quality of information has improved, but information can be found more easy and accurate. Most data is non structured, very hard to capture and easy mistaken for information. If organizations knew what they know Innovative initiatives would pop up more frequent and turn out to be successful more easily.

Classic data

Classic data driven systems capture structured data derived form predefined activities in designed processes. Organizations however do not communicate and collaborate trough this structured data, but in a way more fluid way. When we start a project we write a project initiation document, we send a email to a supplier, a design is written down and presented in a presentation during a meeting online.

Classic (My) document management

Systems designed to capture information from non structured data sets like a document management system are meant to fill the gap. And sure they do in several ways. Data in a document can be captured by index the data in an intelligent way, categorize the subjects. If the data is only a picture systems can recognize these characters as a step before indexing and categorizing.
By adding workflows the system can more fluidly build additional information about the data, a bit like the systems supporting structured processes did before. So this helps organizations in their first step towards a combined structured and non structured information approach of capturing information from data.

Besides all those nicely designed systems that supports these organizations, there are people. It has been very hard to decide what to capture and how to store all that information. When time goes by, we often discover we have more information than we can find, or should I say information is devolving to data again. Well I mean, is information still information when we can't find it and can't give it a meaning?

Data is the new platform, and social is the intelligence

Gavin Michael, global managing director for R&D of Accenture gave his vision (*) on data as the new platform and the importance of social to use it intelligent. He has consolidated the results of research into 8 trends:

• Data takes its rightful place as a platform.
• Analytics is driving a discontinuous evolution from business intelligence.
• Cloud computing will create more value higher up the stack.
• Architecture will shift from server-centric to service-centric.
• IT security will respond rapidly, progressively—and in proportion.
• Data privacy will adopt a risk-based approach.
• Social platforms will emerge as a new source of business intelligence.
• User experience is what matters.

People are key

A more important factor of knowledge in the future of productivity is being able to keep finding information, help people in organizations to find and use the information meaningful.

(**)People are not unique in their exploitation, however we can reason and understand things. And even if we don’t understand, we know that there are others that do and if the need arises, we can study their understanding and learn from them.

The abstract thought isn’t inventiveness. Man didn’t invent fire; he witnessed it through some natural occurrence. Just as he noticed a round rock was easier to roll than a square one. The abstract was in seeing how both of these could be used to advantage.

People are key, they have certain passion, experience, expertise, the abillity to see and understand the use. Systems that can capture this people profile and combine these components with the structured data and the more unstructured and workflow driven and captured information from document intensive processes, will support future productivity of organizations.

Social, people focused information can put to use, ranked, commented, recommended and found through peers, in a social network of people working together apart. Fluid organization supporting changing demands and processes.

(*) Blog Cortney Fielding - Data is the new platform and social the intelligence
(**) Blog John Souter - The people Business



Published in this Future of Productivity series:
Document Dynamics
Documents
The Cloud demands smarter devices, and cheap too!
Aan Het Werk! Aan de slag met Het Nieuwe Werken in het MKB
Office 365 walkthrough and more
Changing the game with Office 365
The Sweetspot of eReaders and Business Solutions
Small and Medium Business
Roadmap announcements BPOS