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What is information management maturity?

Every company creates data, and the larger the company, the more data it creates. Organizing and labeling this data is known as information management. As companies digitize their operations, information management is becoming more of a challenge, and a structured system becomes vital.

More than three-quarters of companies have difficulties finding the right data when they need it, according to the Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM). This isn’t necessarily because the data is missing, but rather it’s because there is an abundance of unsorted data that must be manually searched. By increasing the quality of their information management system, companies can not only reduce this wasted time and increase operational efficiency, but they can leverage this data into insights for a competitive advantage.

So, how exactly does a company set about improving its information management? The first step is to determine the maturity of their information management capabilities. This is done by comparing current practices and capabilities to an information management maturity (IMM) model. A maturity model provides an organisation with the ability to benchmark their information management practices against a series of levels designed to cover the spectrum of methods.

This allows a company to audit their current practices and gain an understanding of their strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities, as well as providing a path forward that can be measured against objectives.

Information management maturity models
When it comes to choosing a model, many business leaders might be overwhelmed by the options. A 2018 examination by information management experts found 14 different models in the past decade alone, and the authors excluded several that didn’t meet their strict criteria. Most models break maturity into several levels (generally five) and measure an organisation based on different criteria or attributes. Often, these models are designed around a specific industry or capability, limiting their applicability to other organisations.

After a careful and thorough examination of the different models, Hexagon PPM has decided to employ the system developed by John Ladley, a world-renowned expert on enterprise information management and data governance. With over 35 years of experience in enterprise information management, Ladley’s governance principles are built around how data and information management operate in the real world, rather than abstract academic ideas.

Ladley’s model examines IMM on three different bases: usage and content, capability, and organisation. Each basis has a scale on which an organisation is measured. The usage and content basis is a measure of what information a company is gathering and how they are using that information to achieve the goals of the business.

The capability basis measures the processes for interacting with information, and the organisation basis measures the capability of an organisation’s members, objectives, and scope at handling their data. It should be noted that for the self-assessment, we opted not to include questions about the organisation basis. We felt that it was too challenging for an organisation to assess its characteristics in this area. To receive insight into your organisation dimension, we are offering a complimentary consultation with one of our IMM experts.

Measuring your information management maturity
Using an assessment to measure a company’s IMM level is crucial to improving business outcomes. As AIIM’s State of Intelligent Information Management report has made clear, as companies continue to digitise their operations and processes, this creates a deluge of information. All the data and content produced through digitisation creates “information chaos”. This chaos can wreak havoc on a company’s operations, wasting time and money, increasing errors, endangering employees, making it challenging to meet regulatory requirements, and ultimately costing business.

To avoid this outcome, it is essential to know where a company is on the IMM spectrum and where it should ideally be. Once a company has these two points of data, they can work with a trusted technology partner to get themselves on the journey towards achieving information management excellence.

To figure out where your company is on the information management maturity spectrum, take our self-assessment.

After this ten-minute assessment, you’ll receive a score measuring the current state of your information management practices. We’ll also email you a report detailing not only how your organisation performs, but what steps you can take to improve your information management maturity.

You also have the option of a free consultation with one of Hexagon PPM’s information management experts to discuss how your information management practices can be improved.