Quality of information

What makes information valuable?

Information is a commidity, which means that it can be bought and sold, and therefore it potentially has value.

Information has increased value when some or all of the following are applied:


Accuracy

To make sure decisions will be accurate the information on a sales report must be accurate to the exact monetary value. This is extremely important as organisations need accurate information to stay in business.

For the information to remain accurate thorough erroring checking and regular updates must occur.


Up to Date

Some information only has value within a specific timescale, for instance share prices can change several times in a minute, and so buying recommendations that are produced would change quickly and would have no value at all once they were out of date.

Up-to-date information is needed when dealing with information produced on consumers' taste as its forever changing. This would be particularly important for an organisation ordering stock to sell to consumers for example a clothes shop wouldnt want to order lots of clothes that have gone out of fashion and wont be purchased.


Complete

If the information is not complete then it loses its value

If the information proceded about a householder for insurance purposes does not include the amount of money the house is being insured for then it is incomplete and loses value as the house will not be insured for the correct amount.


From a reliable source

Because of lack of control on the content included on internet websites this can often reuce the value of the information obtained. Individuals are often encouraged to obtain their information from trusted sources like the BBC websites or trusted newspapers or other recognised organisations as opposed to online resources which are written ad hoc by users such as, Wikipedia. It would certainly make sense to look at reviews if you were buying a new computer. Computer magazines reguarly test and report on equipment from a variety of manufacturers, and these provide valuable information which is more likely to be impartial than infromation from the manufacturers.


Relevant

Information is only valuable to somone who has a use for it, and its value will also depend on that potential use. For example, if a company has information on a summary sales report then it must show sales of individual memebers of staff if it is to be relevant for calculating staff commission bonuses