In the age of knowledge ushered in by the IT revolution, success in business is mandated on the corporate entity being well-informed about the environment around and committed to knowledge-based decision making the latter being the new hallmark of leadership, different from the past in as much as no one could claim any more to be a leader mainly on the strength of ‘inheritance’ or personal ‘charisma’. The Covid disaster disrupted not only the flow of relevant information from outside needed by businesses but also the internal processes of communication and evaluation of where the organization and its manpower stand in the scheme of things.
In the new age, ‘competitiveness’ has acquired a global dimension because the use of information or data could enable a ‘smart’ player to score over a bigger rival in a ‘borderless’ market this challenger could be operating out of any place on the globe.
Corporate houses, therefore, are investing a great deal in establishing a system that would guarantee access to information about the external factors impacting business such as the political environment and the contours of policy making by the government, law and order management, state of the economy, including the quantum of ‘demand’, socio-cultural preferences and discordance, if any, and technological advancement existing in the identified geography. A basic principle of information gathering is to take stock of what is already known within the organization, before proceeding to tap the external sources for any specific requirement.
Internally available information it was realized is a resource not to be missed out. ‘No one knows everything but everybody knows something’ this is a corollary of the age of knowledge, and the corporates rightly realized the importance of tapping the ‘tacit’ knowledge all employees carry with them that did not become available for the cause of the organization only because the latter did not build a system of garnering it.
The term Business Intelligence is now being used for a wide variety of information gathering arrangements perhaps without an adequate understanding of the difference that exists between the words ‘Information’ and ‘Intelligence’.
Information can be defined as any ‘intelligible fact or data that tells you something you did not already know’ this clearly grades people on the scale of being well-informed since in a specific context someone would be ‘better informed than the other and thus would have a competitive edge.
Intelligence is by definition information that tells you ‘what lies ahead. It is thus clear that all intelligence is information but all information is not intelligence. Between two ‘peak performers who have the same knowledge of the past and a matching capability of handling all matters in the present, the only thing that would put one ahead of the other is intelligence or insight into the future.
What lies ahead is either a set of ‘opportunities’ or a cluster of ‘risks’ and both of these are crucial for business advancement. Intelligence is also described as ‘information for action’ and clearly no business organization would sit on the information of intelligence value that gives a clue about an attractive option of profitable growth or an impending danger on the horizon.
In the new age we live in, instant communication and borderless sharing of information have made prompt ‘action’ a prerequisite for success and made ‘time’ a new resource adding on to the earlier three ‘finances’, ‘manpower’, and exclusively owned ‘information’.
