Information is process data, used by manager to initiate action and to run the organisation efficiently. The data process by machine gives information.
TYPES OF INFORMATION
Strategic
Needed for long range planning and directions. This is less structured.
Tactical
Needed to take short rent decision to improve profitability and performance.
Operational
Needed for day to day operations of the organization For example daily sales, billings.
Statutory
Needed by law to send to government authorities. Example - sales tax return.
Characteristics of good quality information can we defined as an acronym
ACCURATE
Accurate : information should be fair and free from bias. It should not have any arithmetical and grammatical errors. Information comes directly or in written from likely to be more reliable than it comes from indirectly ( from hand to hands ) or verbally which can be later retracted.
Complete : Accuracy of information is just not enough. It should also be complete which means facts and figures should not be missing or concealed. Telling the truth but not holly is of no use.
Cost beneficial : information should be analysed for its benefit against the coast of obtaining it. It business context, it is not worth while to a speed money on information that even can not recover it's cost leading to lose is time that information is obtained. In other context, such as hospitals it would be useful to get information even it has no financial benefits due to the nature of the business and expectations of society from it.
User targeted : information should be communicated in the style, format, detail and complexity which address the needs of user of the information. Example senior manager need brief reports which enable them to understand the position and performance of the business at a glance, while operational managers need detailed information which enable them to make day to day decisions.
Relevant : information should be communicated to the right person. It means person which has some control over disease and expected to come out from obtaining the information.
Authoritative : information should come from reliable source. It depends on qualifications and experience and past performance of the person communicating the information.
Timely : information should be communicated in time so that receiver of the information has enough time to decide appropriate action based on the information received. Information which communicates detail of the past event earlier in time is of less importance than recently use information like newspapers. What is timely information depends on situation to situation, selection of appropriate channel of communication is key skill to achieve.
Easy to use : information should be understandable to the users, style, sentence, structure and jargon s should be used keeping the receiver in mind. If reports is targeted to new, in the field, then it should explain technical jargons used in the report.
Relationship between data and information
The relationship between data and information is an interconnected one.
Data is raw facts such as phone numbers or addresses, an information is the organization of these raw facts into a meaningful manner.
The information maybe well organized on a report or table and yet not always be meaningful to all people.
They are different way to arrange data to make it meaningful for different people. For example, one person might be satisfied with information that show him or her the towns in which they are customers leave in to help him or her determine where the largest volume of customer are. A different person might want that information expanded to include those customer strict address as well so that they may determine a better shipping route. Both of this examples contain the same customers and similar data but the first person would have no use for the street addresses in his search and the second person would not have enough information to create a shipping route from just the towns.
The type of data use can also affect the information generated. You can gather a great deal of data on the needs of plants to grow but if you do not put the data in the table correctly or put in accurate data in you will get information that is basically useless. That is the garbage in out theory. It is also a good idea when creating a table to group that like characteristics together to make it easier to gather information from the data. Computers now make it easier to input data into tables in a meaningful manner to create information that might be useful to someone.
The major difference between data and information are
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