So, you have this great business but your information management operations hold you back. How do you get out of this mess? Before you jump at solutions, consider some key questions.

How well does your business understand your data and information requirements? There are three lenses do look at this problem.

Number one, do you know how the data should be naturally organized to benefit what your business mission provides to your customers? Even before you can consider that question, your organization from the highest and lowest levels, must understand mission and focus on the organization’s goals and achieving the highest service to their customers. If everyone understands that core interests, then your in-house technology experts will best understand where to focus resources. If your organization fails in customer focus and a spirit of mission focus, you must correct that immediately otherwise your technology solutions will end up a confused mess.

Number two, do you understand all the legal and mandatory requirements that storing and managing data entail? The legal landscape continues to evolve and there are multiple layers at play. For large companies with big budgets, honestly, hiring a firm with in house expertise is probably the best option. You want a resource that can team up with your organization’s legal experts to come up with a plan. There are certain trends in protecting privacy and securing data that a company  must consider getting ahead of and being proactive.

Number three, do you have a proactive strategy for protecting your information and responding to threats? First of all, threats are evolving all the time. There should be a quarterly review of current high impact, high probability threats. Reduce those down to threats you can mitigate, or lessen the probability or lessen the negative consequences. Keep the focus, most organizations cannot economically spend resources on low probability and low impact threats. You must address any threats that could potentially lose your business or cause crippling aftershocks. A well-run business of any size must consider these questions continuously. Board of directors , CEO level leadership and ownership should make use of quality intelligence feeds as part threat monitoring activities.