Listen/download podcast (15:14 min)

http://www.scientificcomputing.com/Information_Management_in_the_21st_Century.aspx

In the global information economy of the 21st century, effective information management is critical to gaining competitive advantage. In virtually all industries, companies that can best transform their data into information will have an edge over the competition, as vast knowledge can be gained, resulting in better speed to insight and confidence in decision making.
Unfortunately, enterprises are fraught with complex interdisciplinary processes and challenges when it comes to integrating systems to be able to take full advantage of the information they are generating. These challenges include:

• inability of the scientist/manager to efficiently find information locked in a variety of unconnected and frequently incompatible systems across the organization
• lack of integration among the devices and equipment in the laboratory and enterprise systems
• a multitude of different systems used for analysis
• manufacturing and research teams, under pressure to move quickly, that are compelled to make decisions without all of the relevant data at their disposal
• manual reporting processes resulting, for example, in compound pipeline reports that are out of date before they are even completed

To enable effective information management, there are many IT-based activities that need to be conducted by researchers, scientists and managers, such as

• search
• data integration
• collaboration
• analysis/visualization
• reporting/business intelligence

This podcast discusses these five activities, illustrating the complexities and challenges and, more importantly, the advances in technology that address them thereby driving innovation.

Listen/download podcast (15:14 min)