How to unlock hidden business treasures

As businesses adapt to the economic situation, they should look to maximise value from current and past investments, cut costs and streamline operations. Most importantly, they need to ensure that when the economy recovers, the organisation is strong enough to take on the competition.

But many firms do not realise that they already hold many of the tools for success. A wealth of valuable data is contained in dusty archives.

The problem is that much of this data is now no longer easily accessible and firms don’t know what is contained in their archives. To put your company in a stronger position, determine what data is still required and unlock essential information.

Most organisations possess electronic archives that consist of a mix of tape and disk formats. This is not a problem as long as they are in good condition and the equipment and knowledge to read them still exists within the business. Tapes can date back more than 30 years, so it is easy to see how such skills and technologies can be lost.

When accessing archives, the ideal situation is to be armed with a full inventory detailing what information is stored on what medium and where it is kept. This, however, is often not the case and before any effective data mining can take place, an inventory needs to be established.

Up-to-date, accessible archives and inventories can speed the transfer and preservation of knowledge. They can also safeguard against the duplication of work and provide a quick way of accessing such documents efficiently, preventing time and resources being wasted.

Assessing an archive requires investment, both in time and money. But the rewards are substantial ­ – from reducing the size of the archive by de-duplication to avoiding fines for non-compliance.

Revisiting databases, knowledge mining and resurrecting and re-assembling knowledge will enable an organisation to find new ways of servicing its customers, while producing higher returns from what it effectively already knows.

Alastair Molyneux is a BCS contributor