The Information Lifecycle

Information may not be a living thing, but it still has a lifecycle. Understanding that lifecycle can help you get a handle on all the information your business generates. Depending on who you ask, there are anywhere from four to six stages of the information lifecycle, with a variety of names for each stage. For the purposes of this post, I’m going to super simplify things.

My version of the lifecycle stages:

• Acquisition and Creation

• Storage

• Access and Use

• Disposition

Acquisition and Creation

Information comes to you in one of two ways. Either you create it, or you get it from someone else. Maybe you’ve hired a consultant to create training documents (hi! I’m available for that!), or maybe you’ve created a spreadsheet to track sales. Whatever the case, you now have an information source that you didn’t have before and that needs to be dealt with.

Now for those invoices. Some of these are coming to you from your vendors. And some you are creating for your customers. That’s the first step in the lifecycle.

Storage 

So, you’ve got all these invoices. You could throw them all in a file, name it “Invoices,” and be done with it. You can totally sort them out in a few months when you are preparing your taxes. Is it a good idea? No. But you could. Or you could take the simple, one-time step of creating a folder system to store them. My advice would be something like this:

There are other ways you could structure this. For example, you could split the Vendor Invoices folder into separate folders for each vendor. Whatever works for you. But this structure is important and will make your life easier later. And if you have a partner or co-owner or employees, this is even more important. Because everyone should be able to access what they need, when they need it.

Retrieval and Use

Obviously, if we have information, we’re going to use it. If you’re not using the information you have either it’s not good information or it’s not retrievable. Information managers use tools like taxonomy, metadata, etc. (insert long list of jargon here) to make sure your information is easy to retrieve.* This is where a consultant can be handy. We can build a retrieval system that works with the way you work. And we can train you and your employees on how to maintain the system going forward.

If you can retrieve your information, you can use it. Which is what it’s there for, right? Looking at those invoices again… You have to pay them or track whether your customers have paid them. Then you need them for accounting and maybe for other things like reassessing your pricing structure. And, of course, you need them for taxes. More about that in the next section….

Disposition

That’s what this last step, disposition, is about. Making sure you have the records as long as you need them, and then storing or disposing of them as is appropriate.

First, check your laws - local, state, and federal. Some records you have to keep for specific amounts of time. Especially tax documents. For anything that doesn’t have a legal requirement, you have a decision to make. This is where a records retention schedule comes in. In a nutshell, a retention schedule ensures that you have your documents for as long as you need them. 

Tax documents? Check your legal requirements. Training manual for software you don’t use anymore? Trash. Customer records with personally identifying information (PII)? That’s a whole other ballgame that I’ll talk about in a future post. With legal and ethical guidelines, and the help of an information manager, you create your own retention schedule and then stick with it.

*NOTE: I use the word retrieval here deliberately. A lot of versions of the information lifecycle say “access” for this. But accessibility has come to mean ADA compliance. Both are important, and I don’t want to conflate them.