The Corporate Memory concept
| Pages | 309-312 |
| Date | 01 April 1995 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb045380 |
| Published date | 01 April 1995 |
| Author | Sandy Adams |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Article
The
Corporate Memory concept
Sandy Adams
GLOMAS Africa (Pty)
Limited,
PO Box
98055,
Sloane
Park,
2152 South Africa
Abstract: Organisations are flooded with information of all
kinds,
generated
electronically and otherwise. Increased use of computers and networks, and
access
to global networks compound the problem, while inadequate management
results in an ever-increasing
loss
of time and information. Experts
claim
that each
manager wastes an average of four weeks per year just in searching for
documents, which translates to a conservative cost of R25 000 per executive per
year.
It
is
even estimated that
7.5%
of documents are lost
forever.
So the
information professional is faced with an increasingly important
challenge,
namely to manage this diverse and rapidly growing collection effectively.
Several approaches have been suggested to manage the intellectual assets in an
organisation: for example, using shared file servers to store
the
online
objects,
or
storing copies of documents in image
format,
or using PC-based file-finding
software. These approaches have advantages and shortcomings. We propose an
integrated solution which we call the Corporate Memory to maintain all active
and historical information that is worth
sharing,
managing and preserving, which
may even include information that is usually
intangible,
such as the
ideas
and
experience of
staff.
Our
approach involves handling each Corporate Memory
object,
be it physical
or
electronic, in the way most suited to the type of
object.
We propose
the
use of
specialised
tools,
such as MS
Word,
which already exist throughout an
organisation for data capture and object storage. These tools should be linked to
a central hub of information, responsible for indexing and managing the objects,
which allows for a high level of control as well as offering a single point of access
to the
objects.
To
be
effective,
the system must handle diverse
data,
cope with
ever-changing requirements and answer unpredictable requests.
Managing the Corporate Memory is essentially an information task and not a
computing
task.
It is not only logical but also critical that this should be left in the
hands of information experts.
1.
Introduction
GLOMAS was established as
a
market
research company in Europe in the
1970s and has been an information so-
lutions provider since the early 1980s.
Our business partner, Cuadra Associ-
ates,
has experience in the information
industry going as far back as the
1960s. With this background both
companies have been in a position to
observe the increased use of comput-
ers and global networks, and the re-
sulting explosion of information in
both small businesses and large inter-
national corporations, as well as the
impact this has had on the companies,
their information departments and
their information professionals.
The existence of the 'Information
Explosion' is now
a
widely recognised
phenomenon. Hundreds of software
packages have arisen, promising solu-
tions to the problem of coping with a
rapidly growing information resource.
Yet
the
packages selected by corporate
management and DP departments fre-
quently do not involve information
specialists at all, resulting not only in
unsatisfactory solutions but also
fur-
ther marginalising of information and
records centres.
We believe that:
• the problem of the Information
Explosion is very real and very
severe, and is likely to worsen in
future;
• the financial implications of bad
information management are
enormous and should be
recognised as such by decision
makers;
• most products on the market do
not address this problem
adequately;
• information professionals must
be involved in the successful
solution — and the solution we
offer is the Corporate Memory
concept.
2.
The Information Explosion
It is estimated that active files increase
at a rate of
25%
per year. In the US
alone, over 100 billion documents are
already created each year and an aver-
age of
19
copies
are made
of each busi-
ness document, most of which are filed
for later reference or use
In-house data and storage capaci-
ties are growing at a phenomenal rate.
A typical PC network with about 7GB
of capacity in 1993 could grow in ca-
pacity to more than 40GB by 1997.
External data supplies are growing
just
as
fast. A few years ago there were
a handful of the large traditional infor-
mation providers. Now many of our
customers, who are often also clients
of these information providers, are
themselves becoming
hosts
for distrib-
uted branches of their
own
company as
well as to outside users. Internet, the
World Wide Web and CDROM, to-
gether with more sophisticated in-
The Electronic Library, Vol. 13, No. 4, August 1995 309
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