Over the coming weeks, I will be addressing various aspects of information management as they relate to the supplemental education business. We will look at how companies have struggled with these issues and the solutions they have arrived at to overcome these problems. We will examine a few case studies and see how efficient management of information has provided a key to growth and financial success.
OHIO (Only Handle It Once)
An important objective in information management is to design a system so that information is only handled once. In simplest terms, this means that you don’t want to capture redundant information. This seems to be fairly obvious, but many companies have redundancy throughout their administrative systems. Let’s look at an example.
An instructor works with a student and then records information about a session. This log is turned in at the end of the day or week. An administrator reviews these paper logs and inputs the attendance in a student file, the session hours in an accounting system like QuickBooks under the student’s account, and session hours worked by the instructor in the payroll system, such as QuickBooks or a payroll vendor, such as ADP or SurePayroll. Finally, the administrator communicates with parents about the student’s progress from the instructor notes, perhaps in an email or phone call.
You can find redundancy by first finding the place where the data was first recorded. All subsequent handling of the data creates inefficiency. In our example, the instructor could collect and input all necessary information once: student name, instructor name, attendance, session type, and notes, directly after the session. Efficiency would be reclaimed by allowing the data first captured to drive the various areas that need this information: billing, payroll, reporting, etc, without having to enter the data into another system.
A well-crafted integrated and relational database is generally required to accomplish this goal. In order for these databases to be effective, the system must be web-based or at least accessible across a network and allow for levels of secure access. These databases are created with programs like FileMaker Pro and MS Excel on one end of the spectrum, to full, web-based applications written in advanced programing languages like Java on the other end of the spectrum. Whatever system you use, remember OHIO when analyzing your information management solutions.