In this months e.business review magazine, Mike Thompson from the Butler Group writes about the obvious information overload that the internet provides, however, what is not so obvious are the solutions that he recommends to deal with this issue effectively.

Organisations need to consider implementing a Business Intelligence (BI) strategy and like all strategies it needs to be clearly defined. For this strategy to work it needs to be built as a deep-seated intelligence culture.

Issues and problems need to be defined as follows:

• How to get the right information to the relevant person in the shortest possible time.
  
• Ensure personnel do not sink under weight of information overload.
  
• Querying open sources for information.

Information is only as good as the person receiving it and should also be delivered in a timely manner, therefore the suggested parameters to work with when implementing an intelligence strategy he suggests are as thus:

• An organisational security policy must be adhered to.
  
• Protection of the nature and confidentiality of the information requirement.
  
• Provide filters to information that does not directly relate to the request.
  
• Ensure filters do not create too tight a boundary, to ensure that relevant data is not missed.
  
• Create a solution that empowers the user.

Is your organisation suffering from information overload? Careful presentation of information to employees is essential to ensure that the workforce do not feel inadequate or confused.

Query the use of multiple sources of information. Good BI comes from being able to use a variety of sources for information, both internal and external. What is necessary is a structured approach to where information is accessed from at all times.

Implementing an effective BI solution. It remains important that a BI strategy should never be forgotten about as this will form part of the overall strategy for most e-businesses.

TrainingZONE says: It is very easy to forget that good IT strategies need communicating, then who better to do that than the IT Trainer since they are the ones who are teaching people to make best use of these systems that manipulate information for the benefit of the organisation. In order to own these strategies people need to be involved or at least have some say in their content and very often IT Trainers are overlooked because they happen to be good at 'delivering' the message. More use should be made of the IT Trainer especially when considering implementing an effective BI solution at all levels, not just in the classroom.

If you already have good working practices in place with managing your information TrainingZONE would like to hear what you have to say by using the comment facility below.