Introduction

The information management challenge

Every business needs to keep track of some information. It may be as simple as keeping records of customers, their orders and invoices. In more complicated scenarios it may amount to handling many hundreds, or even thousands of requests per day via mail, fax, telephone, and the Internet. Computers greatly simplify this task by providing means to store, search, retrieve, display, and exchange information. Most importantly, computers can be programmed to manipulate information in a way required by a particular business organization. Computers are also able to process large volumes of data in a very short period of time.

Today, powerful desktop computers are installed on many work places throughout businesses. They are equipped with general-purpose productivity tools that allow employees to create rich-content documents or spreadsheets, scan and print documents, electronically store and share them with co-workers within the organization or with other parties via e-mail. Specific business requirements, on the other hand, require specialized software. In some cases, such software can be purchased off the shelf and, with various degree of customization, installed on the computers.

Many organizations, however, have unique needs. Addressing such needs requires purpose-built software to be developed. This generally involves the organization formulating business requirements for the software and handing them over to engineers who have to re-interpret the requirements to design and handcraft new software using the selected computer technologies. The software then undergoes the evaluation and testing phase and, once the organization is satisfied, it becomes operational.

Building custom software is an inherently complex process. Unless the task at hand is simple, it is often difficult to specify upfront precisely what the software is required to do. The organization should be prepared to deal with new and unexpected requirements coming up as the software development progresses and also to re-negotiate project costs and delivery dates. As a result, custom software development is often an expensive undertaking with high risk of the project significantly exceeding the original budget and time frames.

Purchasing or building software is only the first step to address information management needs. Because businesses are dynamic organizations, these needs are likely to change in the future. Therefore, once the software is operational it requires maintenance to accommodate changes in business needs. The changes, however small, need to be communicated to the support engineers who modify the software, test it and put the new version into operation. Apart from having to wait for software to be updated, the cost of such maintenance may over time significantly exceed the cost of the original software. Off-the-shelf software, although often less expensive to buy, may be very difficult or impossible to adjust, thereby forcing the organization to look for other solutions.

Rapidly growing organizations face special challenges. Because of the rate of their growth they may be forced to re-implement or switch entirely their software since the original software design may simply be unable to cope with the increased volume of information or complexity of processing logic. The changeover requires additional investments in information technology and causes inevitable implementation delays.

Aware IM

Aware IM is a software tool that was created to help organizations address many of their data processing needs. The main design goal for Aware IM was to substantially reduce the technical complexity of managing information and give non-technical people much greater control over the process. As a result the information management task becomes easier, more intuitive, predictable, manageable, and ultimately less expensive.

With Aware IM one can automate the organization’s policies, procedures, guidelines, checklists, document handling, form input validation, event registration, decision making, e-mail notifications, data tracking, report generation, task scheduling, periodic processing, information sharing, bulk data exchange, and many other tasks in a flexible and cost-efficient manner. It can help to increase awareness, enforce standards, improve quality control, lift compliance level, simplify communication, and save time and efforts across the organization.

Aware IM is configurable information management software that can be adjusted by users without special computer skills to manage their specific information. In a simple intuitive way users can specify the information they want to manage and the rules on how to process the information. Aware IM automatically performs all the technical work required to manage information such as storage, retrieval, calculation, security, sharing, presentation, communication, etc.

Aware IM works in two modes: the configuration mode and the operation mode. The configuration mode allows the configurator, that is, a person configuring an information management system, to specify the contents and behaviour of the system. Once the definition work is finished the configurator makes the system operational. In the operation mode Aware IM analyses the system configuration and manages the information according to the instructions provided by the configurator. Regular users access the system in the operation mode in the course of conducting their day-to-day business activities.

The following picture illustrates the two modes of Aware IM:

The configuration of an information system, as defined by the configurator, can be exported out of Aware IM and saved in a file on a computer disk, just like any other electronic document. Similarly, a configuration can be imported into Aware IM from a file. This allows people to share configurations they create so that other people can adapt existing configurations for their own needs or reuse some parts of such configurations to incorporate into their own information systems.

Aware IM can be installed on a personal computer. If such a computer is a part of an office computer network the people in the office can use the system from their computers using a standard Internet browser. People outside of the office can also access the system as long as the computer on which Aware IM is installed is connected to the Internet. Alternatively Aware IM can be installed on a computer managed by an Internet hosting service provider so that users can access the information system via the Internet.