Information is the most important and valuable asset to your business. Without it, you are just a bunch of people who get together to talk (or email or tweet or ____). Once you develop, use and maintain a common set of knowledge, processes and expertise, you create intellectual property that is valuable. Whether that information is the specs on machine tools or the source code for your next software application, if you lost it, you’re business could be in jeopardy.
Information exists in many places. You write it on paper, it’s stored electronically in documents and files, it’s in databases and it’s in people’s heads. Most of it is in electronic documents, since this is how we maintain the collective knowledge of our organizations. We used to be storytellers, but then we started writing things down so we could remember and pass them on. With so much critical information inside businesses, there is too much to remember without writing it down.