Information Management
Your information should work for you, not against you.
Every business runs on information: contracts, invoices, customer records, project files, compliance documents. When it sits in a proper system, your team finds what it needs in seconds and gets on with the day. When it doesn’t, someone loses an afternoon to six different folders, three people argue about which version is current, and a simple audit request turns into a week of digging.
Information management is how we close that gap. It covers where your information lives, how it’s organised, how long you need to keep it, and whether the right person can find the right version when it matters.
What this looks like day to day
Information management takes a different shape for every business, sized to what yours needs to keep its information under control. Past work in this space has included:
- Implementing a point-of-sale system and connecting it to the records that depend on it
- Building or fixing a document management system so files stop living in someone’s inbox
- Setting up or restructuring a shared drive so version confusion stops costing you time
- Advising on quality management systems for businesses that need to prove their process as well as run it
- Reviewing which records the law requires you to keep, and for how long
- Server installs and migrations that keep your existing records intact
If it involves finding, storing, protecting, or retiring business information, it sits under this service.
Where it overlaps with our other work
Information management is one piece of a bigger picture. Once your records are organised, Data & Analytics is what turns them into decisions instead of paperwork. And the way you store, access, and retire information is a direct input into Cyber Risk, since old records sitting in the wrong place are one of the more common ways a business gets exposed. If the problem crosses pillars, we’ll look at the whole picture, not one slice of it.
How we approach it
We start by asking about your business, before recommending any platform. A five-person business and a fifty-person business don’t need the same document management system, and we size the solution to the problem, not to the biggest invoice we could write.
Every engagement follows the principles we hold ourselves to across the business: honest advice about time and cost before work starts, a build-and-refine approach over one big rollout, and pricing you can see and understand.
Backed by decades in the systems that hold a business together
This work is led by Mic Zagami, who has spent three decades building and leading technology and engineering teams, and Adam Marinovic, who came up through database administration and systems analysis before leading integration projects across financial services, health, and consumer businesses. Between us, few information or document management problems are new.
Common questions
How long do I need to keep business records in Australia? Most tax and super records need to be kept for five years under ATO rules. Company financial records under the Corporations Act, and employment records under the Fair Work Act, both need seven years. The safe default for a business with staff is to work to the longer period. Treat this as a starting point, not legal advice, and check the rules that apply to your records with us or your accountant.
What’s the difference between a file server and a document management system? A file server stores files. A document management system stores files too, and adds version control, search, permissions, and an audit trail on top. If your team has ever argued about which version is current, that’s the gap causing it.
Do small businesses need formal information governance? Most businesses don’t need a formal, written governance framework, but every business needs some version of it: rules for where things live, who can access them, and how long they stay. The word “formal” puts people off more than the practice itself does.
We use a shared drive. Isn’t that enough? For a while, yes. Shared drives tend to hold up fine until a business grows past a handful of people, and then search slows down, permissions get messy, and nobody’s sure which folder is current. We’ll tell you straight whether you’ve reached that point.
How does an engagement start? With a call, not a contract. Tell us what’s going wrong and we’ll give you a straight answer on what it will take to fix, before you commit to anything.
Talk to someone who has fixed this before
If your business is losing time to information that’s hard to find, hard to trust, or sitting somewhere it shouldn’t, book a call.