Management Information (MI) is one of the cornerstones of supporting the effective running of your business but so many organisations fail to focus enough on their MI capability, the effectiveness of their MI, or whether the MI is being collected and reported at the right time and is being considered properly by decision-makers.
The former National Statistician, John Pullinger, described MI as ‘aggregate information collated and used in the normal course of business to inform operational delivery, policy development or the management of organisational performance’.
Today so many organisations produce vast amounts of data ranging across:
- the type and number of clients they have
- their productivity
- profit and loss
- cashflow
- balance sheets
- market trends and
- research and development.
MI can inform you on the state of your organisation’s performance, its infrastructure, its assets, your workforce’s skills, and training needs, all the way through to the levels of diversity.
MI enables you as decision-makers to more fully understand your organisation’s performance and your position within a market as well as plan for the future and make good decisions.
What can MI offer you to support good governance?
Your organisation’s MI should be extremely useful. Done well, it can increase efficiency and profitability, but also inform your decision makers about the strategic direction of your organisation, and has an impact far beyond good governance.
Good MI enables your organisation to manage itself effectively and efficiently, offering proactive performance tracking and trend identification. It allows you to identify where things are going wrong early enough to enable changes to be made, thereby mitigating risks. It also enables the collation of good data that can be analysed to support the achievement of your organisation’s goals, both in the short-term and long-term.
Delivering better outcomes
In its UK Corporate Governance Code, The Financial Reporting Council recommends that information obtained through MI be included in annual reports to enable shareholders to assess the quality of governance of an organisation. In this situation, MI also provides assurance to key stakeholders and external parties that the organisation is being run effectively, and demonstrates that they are delivering the right outcomes for all involved.
Depending on which sector your organisation is operating in, MI can also help you meet your regulatory requirements as and when they arise, enabling you to be on the front foot as far as possible.
There are many opportunities for organisations to effectively use MI and a vast amount of data on which to base your decision-making. As such, the resources available to your decision-makers can be utilised to provide a comprehensive and informative outcome for all involved. At Brighter, we have years of experience in helping clients develop, embed and use good MI, and we are well-placed to support you. If you’d like a confidential chat, please, contact Simon Davis today.
COMMENTS