So, What Is Business Information?

It does not matter what business operation your enterprise is engaged in: Buying – Selling – Manufacturing – Transporting, you need information to monitor, evaluate, compare, budget, and allocate resources for strategic/tactical decision making.

In fact, after money, property/equipment and people, meaningful business information is generally considered to be your 'fourth resource'. In the same way that you use money and materials, you take data, process it, and generate information which is then used to plan, direct, organise, control, staff, and fund your business. However, to be Business Information, the information must first relate:

• to your business objectives which need to be achieved;
• to technical information about specific jobs, responsibilities, products, services, stakeholders, resources which are of interest to your enterprise;
• to feedback of the results of prior decisions to support corrective actions;
• to background information about your company, its competitors, its stakeholders, its regulatory compliance to legal/industry standards/statutes, and the commercial environment in which the business operates.

Then, to be meaningful, the information must bring about an increase in knowledge that must be relevant to the decision making activities at the required levels within your company. What information is needed and who needs it are inter-related because a recipient must only receive information related to his/her job, his/her roles and responsibilities, and decisions that he/she has to take. Additionally, information is a peculiar thing which varies depending upon when it is received, how it is received, its consistency on receipt, and its understandability on receipt. The ultimate objective of effective information provision is to keep all levels of decision makers completely informed on all changes, developments in your business that are of specific interest to them insofar as prioritising and executing their commercial tasks.

Experience has shown that regardless of what information is being processed or how it is being processed, good information needs to be accurate, timely, and understandable. Therefore, it is not surprising that the survival of your business actually depends on the processing of good information, with or without the use of computers.

As a business owner, you must realise that although you may spend a lot of money on computer hardwares and softwares, these are just disposable tools. It is your Business Information that has far greater strategic value to you than the technology.


"Information is data endowed with relevance and purpose. Converting data into information requires knowledge"
Peter Drucker - The New Realities.