Information is one of the most valuable resources of a company. Companies never captured as much information as they do today. It travels much more swiftly through the company than ever in the past. A same information is shared and used for many different purposes. Modern software allow users to handle information nearly without limits. The capacity of data storage devices exploded. Many companies struggle to manage the information.

Companies never captured as much information as they do today. Many mobile electronic devices appeared with the capability to capture, store, process and communicate information. Much information is stored in the many different available software environments and in one of the rich types of presentation of information, like one of the multimedia types. Thanks to all the communication channels, information can easily be transferred and used elsewhere.

Commonly, the information describes the world, the company, the products and services of a company. All these changed more rapidly. The tendency in products and services is to customise it and to renew it more quickly to please the customers. As a consequence, more information is needed. The relations among the information elements is more complex. Information has also to be updated more frequently and has a shorter lifecycle.

The usage of information has change too. Much information is gathered and processed in an aggregated way. The information is used more dynamically. Information is often put in a format that is richer than bare structured data. It is more and more common to take the meaning of information in relation to its context into account. Much information that is available has a social and personal character.

The information is spread throughout the company. Much information is less structure and is stored in a format that do not always allow mass processes to use it or uses a lot of storage space and CPU. This information is not linked to other information. Its validity is unknown and it is rarely inventoried. The flexibility and freedom encourages users to acquire bad habits like duplication, trials and often no clean up is done. Globally spoken, there is a lack of organisation, policies, responsibility and management. Databases have often ill-designed. Rarely the databases are designed only with the present needs and the future application that will work with the database in mind.

Here are some issues (more common issues are listed below): information overload, inconsistency, unreliability, wasted time and resources in verification and managing information, loss of meaning, loss of control, security breaches

• Defining, verifying, documenting and improving the Information Architecture (IA)
• Information Modeling / Database Design
• Identifying and mapping information needs
• Defining data policies and standards related to information
• Mapping the information streams
• Advise on data consistency checking
• Organising system and project documentation
• Increase the useability of your system documentation
• Identify opportunities for improvement in dealing with information
• Sharing / reusing of information
• Defining approaches to get the information tsunami under control
• Set up of an Information Management Framework (IM)

Other common issues related to information:

• Information overload
• Lack of some needed information
• Information arrives lately
• Information is confusing or it's meaning is unknown
• Information sources remain hidden, unknown and unused
• Information is outdated
• Unknown correctness and validity of information
• Inconsistenties within the information
• Information silos
• Information duplication
• Lack of standards
• The unappropriate format makes information difficult to process
• The unappropriate information structure hinders further development of new features or structure doesn't match the reality forcing the usage of tricky processing and additional complexity
• Information isn't and can't be linked
• Unknown information growth
• Unknown owner of information
• Information is not always reused
• Information isn't kept up-to-date and managed
• Information access and usage is not under control
• Unneeded information is captured, stored and processed
• No clear distinction between what information can be archived or clean-up and what information needs to be kept