Conclusion 

In the information age the traditional forms of capital, land, labour and money, have lost their importance as drivers of economic growth. Enterprises now succeed or fail depending upon how well they learn to use information to produce value for their users and suppliers. Technology plays only a supporting role, but are not itself the driver of growth.

As suggested by Wilson, the use of information is possible and highly relevant to the creation of effective information services. It is possible, Wilson explains, because we already understand so much about information needs and the behaviour of people engaged in satisfying those needs, and we also know a great deal about how people work. It is also possible because, being in direct contact with the user, and having the capability to interact to an even greater degree, the information manager has in his/her own hands the capacity to discover more.

It is relevant, says Wilson, because creating effective information services demands knowledge of these matters - if we fail to understand users' needs and if we fail to understand the processes of satisfying those needs, information services will be ad hoc, unsatisfactory and, eventually, ignored by the information user. If this happens the information worker would probably have to start looking for a new job because the old one would not last much longer!

The process of developing an Information Strategy does not start with either information or information technology. It starts where all business strategies start, with value. Any enterprise operates by taking inputs from suppliers and producing from them outputs to users. An enterprise should strive to operate in a way, which allows it to successfully compete with others who are trying to meet the same user’s needs. It does this by delivering and receiving value (more of it and in a better way than competitors) from and to, both customers and suppliers.

There are four basic dimensions to the value that our suppliers can deliver to us or we can deliver to our users:

• Costs: The recipient is able to reduce its costs because of the value delivered
• Functionality: The recipient is able to do something they could not do before, and this has value to them
• Time: The recipient is able to reduce the time required to perform an activity
• Accuracy: Reduced defect rates add value to the recipient

These dimensions of value are not necessarily the only ones, nor are they necessarily independent of each other. We have found, however, that they are useful in identifying strategic information around which to build an Information Strategy.

This value analysis applies also to processes internal to an enterprise, such as order acquisition or supplier management. Every process has suppliers and users. It should add (strategic) value to them or be considered strongly for elimination.

For some enterprises the overall strategy can be fixed without developing the information component (e.g., strategy is to be a low-cost producer in a fixed market). For an information age enterprise, however, it is more likely that the Information Strategy is core to the overall strategy, and therefore they must be developed together.

Unless we are a monopoly or our competitors are just harvesting (not likely), we will never stop developing and improving our Information Strategy. Our enterprise operates in a feedback loop. Because it is knowledge-driven (the Information Technology), and knowledge is a limitless resource, our Information Strategy can be a strong driver of continual growth.

We consider that our suppliers and users are producers too. Our objective should be to integrate them into our Information Strategy, creating mutually reinforcing feedback loops with them.