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INFORMATION NEEDS OF BUSINESS 41

Headlines published in 2001

Terror attacks help boost technologies that help save vital information.
Time, October 2001, p. Y11

The ease with which information can be shared globally, for all its good,
also works to the advantage of terrorists, says Howard Perlmutter, profes-
sor emeritus of social architecture at the Wharton School of the University
of Pennsylvania.
Information Week, September 17, 2001
Russian programmer accused of breaking copyright law tells his side of
the story.
San Francisco Chronicle, August 31, 2001, B1

In the present global business environment, research needs to take advantage of
the current and emerging technologies to find solutions to problems. We will
now offer a broad overview of various technologies that facilitate managers in
decision making, particularly as they relate to business research. We will partic-
ularly highlight those that enhance the effectiveness of organizations insofar as
they help research in the preliminary information-gathering phase, and subse-
quently in obtaining and analyzing data from several sources for enabling busi-
ness decisions. We will also briefly discuss information technology that helps
managers to find ready access to stored data for managerial decision making. The
ensuing chapters in this book will provide more specific details of the use of par-
ticular software for literature search, data collection, data analysis, and business
presentations, as are relevant.

INFORMATION NEEDS OF BUSINESS

To run a business, useful, timely, accurate, reliable, and valid data are needed.
When data in their raw form are evaluated, analyzed, and synthesized, useful
information becomes available to managers that helps them make good business
decisions. For example, figures of gross sales, profits, and the like, are data of a
descriptive nature, which are doubtless informative to the manager (e.g., the
amount of dollars received from the sale of the product, and how much profit
the company has made). They do not, however, give any indication as to the
measures the company could take to promote its growth further. Informed deci-
sions (for instance, sales strategies the company should adopt) would be a func-
tion of the analysis of these data and synthesizing them, in conjunction with
other relevant information pertaining to different territories, regional sales statis-
tics, competitors’ sales and strategies, and the like.