Information quality for strategic technology planning

• Published in: Industrial management + data systems Vol. 103; no. 8; pp. 633 - 643
• Main Authors: Gelle, Esther, Karhu, Katja
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Wembley MCB UP Ltd 01-11-2003; Emerald Group Publishing Limited
• Subjects: Competition; Full text retrieval; Information management; Information retrieval; Information sources; Information technology; Quality; Quality control; Quality management; Search engines; Strategic planning; Studies; Success factors; Total quality; User needs; Search engines; Full text retrieval; Information management; Quality
• ISSN: 0263-5577; 1758-5783; 0263-5577
• DOI: 10.1108/02635570310497675

This article discusses the increasing importance of information to so called information factories. As information management is their core competence, development of information quality should be the key focus of quality management. Good quality information is error free and fulfills the user's needs. Technology managers define their needs as having recent, relevant, reliable and analyzed information on competitive environment and development of technologies. Several methods used with full text search engines to improve different aspects of information quality, are demonstrated and described based on our constructive work, implementing Business Technology portals. Relevancy of information was improved with several used methods and reliability by structured searches with meta-information and by reduced information space. Recentness of information was improved with push technology. As conclusion, full-text search engines increase the information quality by filtering information, however recentness of information and analyzed information are more difficult aspects to improve than relevancy and reliability.