Information is the lifeblood of any enterprise and includes both electronic and physical content. This information is crucial to execute business processes. Say for example the HR process – there is information in the form of the job description, resumes, interview feedback, employee health records, reference check reports, approvals etc. Such information is typically the lifeblood for any process. On the one hand, visibility to such information when required is absolutely mandatory to execute the process well. On the other hand, there are elements of integrity and governance of such information. The workflows associated with processes are typically over emails, on phone or paper. This leads to a lot of issues relating to process cycle time, cost, audit trails and governance of such information.
Information Management is a discipline to put a structure to such unstructured information and automate the lifecycle of such unstructured content and workflows. Having control and manageability of such information is what information management is about.
Today information management is emerging as a fast emerging sector and many are building their career in the field. Stoodnt.com got in touch with Srividya Kannan, Founder, Director – Avaali Solutions Pvt Ltd. – a consulting-and-technology-services company specializing in Information Management – to know more about this domain.
Srividya Kannan, is a proven business leader with more than 19 years of experience across diverse functions including Sales, Alliances & Channels, Strategy, Innovation, Business Finance, Operations and Sales Enablement. She has extensive experience in creating and managing high-performance teams working in large matrix organizations such as Wipro, Oracle and SAP. Srividya launched Avaali Solutions Pvt. Ltd. in January 2013 with the vision to support in the creation of a connected enterprise where information and networks are highly leveraged to drive profitable revenue growth.
How To Make A Career In Information Management
Q&A with With Srividya Kannan, Founder, Director – Avaali Solutions Pvt Ltd
Q. What is Avaali all about?
A. We work with large enterprises to help them increase process agility, drive governance and compliance with Information Management solutions. Close to 80% of business processes across industries are manual in nature despite these large enterprises investing heavily in transactional applications such as ERP, CRM, SRM, HR etc. This is because most business processes rely on unstructured content, workflows and validations etc. which are done in a manual way. This leads to significant costs, risks and cycle time to process. Avaali has worked with over 55+ large enterprises across Asia, Middle East and Africa to help them automate their processes including shared services centre, and drive business performance.
We have a set of experienced consultants who understand the functional and technical aspects of solutions that best suit large enterprises. We’re the only company in India that has partnered with AIIM (www.aiim.org), the oldest (over 75 years) and the most respected community for Information Management professionals worldwide. We realize that the skills in this space is really limited, and therefore we’ve set up Avaali Academy with the objective of increasing skills in this space which has a huge demand from enterprises.
Q. What was the idea behind launching Avaali Solutions Pvt. Ltd?
A. In the few years prior to our incorporation, we met with over 500+ large enterprises. One interesting observation from these meetings was that even though they spend a lot of dollars on transactional applications, close to 80% of their business processes are manual in nature. Typically, business processes entail dealing with a whole lot of unstructured content in various formats (both physical and electronic). Approvals and exception handling all take place manually. Process stakeholders spend a lot of time looking for information that are typically lying in bits and silos across the enterprise. Governance and risks are huge because confidential information could be accessed by unauthorized users and when a knowledge worker quits the organization, unfortunately a lot of information is lost. These factors have a huge impact on productivity and cost and in turn present a big opportunity for improvement. Information Management solutions enable enterprises to build agile processes and deliver significant improvement in enterprise performance.
Avaali supports enterprises to completely automate such unstructured content, integrate that with structured data applications and consequently significant improvement in process agility and cost reduction.
Q. What is the impact created?
A. Avaali has executed over 100+ projects across Asia, Middle East and Africa. All our customers are marquee brands and leading companies in their segment. We have a set of skilled and highly engaged employees who have enabled this impact.
Q. How are you helping organizations through information management?
A. Our customers have reported over 35-40% reduction in process cycle time and over a 40% cost reduction due to our engagements.
Q. How can one get skilled in this field?
A. As with any field, one can learn about the disciplines, practices and technologies in information management by engaging with experts. Avaali Academy offers various courses on information management that are so very relevant to enterprises today.
Q. Are their courses in information management in India? If yes please name them and also name the institutions which offer such courses?
A. Avaali Academy offers courses on information management. Avaali has partnered with AIIM which the oldest and the most recognized communities of Information management professionals. Avaali offers AIIM programs and certifications in addition to our own programs.
Q. What are the career opportunities in information management in India and also across the world?
A. There are massive career opportunities in this field. Given that the skills in this field are quite a niche, the demand for such skills, especially of people who truly understand the practices and technologies are much in demand.
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