Explain different types of business information

Introduction
The business that I will be investigating is Sports Interactive. They are the creative studio behind the Football Manager series of interactive games. Based in Old Street, Central London the studio is wholly owned by the Japanese software and video game company Sega. In addition to its work on Football Manager, the studio has also created a number of other sports management simulations including NHL Eastside Hockey Manager and Championship Manager Quiz, and is the former developer of Championship Manager. Each release of Championship Manager/Football Manager has traditionally been one of the fastest selling PC games in the UK with Championship Manager 4 the fastest of all time. They only have approximately 70 employees, so this makes it easy to communicate with one another.

Business information is one of the three main segments of the information industry. The other two segments are scientific, technical and medical (STM) and educational and training content. Examples of business information are news, market research and credit and financial information. It is important to have relevant and effective business information as without it you cannot run a business. Also, without relevant and effective business information you cannot keep up to date with your business. We can put business information into two sub-categories: internal and external. Internal business information is information which is only available to the business.

This information will be private and accurate. Internal information may take the form of sales figures, personnel records, customer records, and financial documents such as trading, profit and loss accounts and the balance sheet. External business information is information which comes from outside the business. This is gathered via mainly secondary information methods such as newspapers and magazines, the internet etc. Sports Interactive use many forms of information for different reasons. They use both internal information and external information. It’s important for Sports Interactive to communicate effectively and cohesively in order to create a mind-blowing game.

Verbal information
Firstly, Sports Interactive uses verbal information. Verbal information is information which comes directly from a person’s mouth. They would use this when the creative team meet at a conference to discuss how they can improve from the previous annual game and what new features they could include. These new features would have been announced in a conference to the rest of the Sports Interactive team. The leader of the team would use verbal information to get his points across clearly about what he expects for the upcoming year. They would also use external verbal information as they would ask certain club’s coaching teams if they feel a player needs to be either upgraded or downgraded. They also ask members of the public to scout their local team’s players and get their advice on what certain player’s attributes should be. Written information

Sports Interactive also use written information. Written information is information which is in writing. As they are the makers of the Football Manager franchise, they need to go to various football clubs around the world and write down all the information they can get. They need to scout the players from clubs that are not shown on TV as they need to estimate their statistics and attributes. This was seen in an episode of football-based TV show ‘Soccer AM’ as presenter Max Rushden trained with Watford F.C. in order to get his attributes, as he features on the game itself. They will need to write all this information down as they will not be able to keep track of it, and they can easily transfer the information from paper to the software they use. They would also use the statistics and attributes they used for their previous games as a benchmark for next year’s game. Onscreen information

Onscreen information is information which can be viewed on a screen. During the initial stages of making the game, the creative team will meet at a conference to discuss how they can improve from the previous annual game and what new features they could include. The team leader would present information in a variety of ways at this conference. He would use on-screen information in the form of a presentation. This presentation would highlight their aims and objectives for this year’s games. This may include the profit they would like to make or any new ideas they have come up with. Football Manager 2015 will include live streaming software which allows the consumers to stream their games. This would have been announced in a conference to the rest of the Sports Interactive team.

A conference in this situation is good as it allows for questions to be asked about any of the changes that are being made. They would also use on-screen information in the form of the software that they use to create the game. As they use a database format for their games they will have all the information they used in last year’s game there. They can easily transform that information onto a new database and make improvements to the newest game. Also, the production team for Sports Interactive will need to give the information for the CD cover and box cover to Sega on-screen as they can easily print them out in the factory.

Multi-media information
Multi-media information is information which uses a combination of images, words and sounds. Sports Interactive use multi-media information in their business. They may use video conferences on Skype when a scout or a member of the team is working abroad. They will use this when they need the information as soon as possible. They also need to send the images of the players through multi-media so that they can easily put them onto the game. Another form of multi-media Sports Interactive use is videos. They use videos to promote their Football Manager games in order to gain as many customers as possible. This is important because without customers they would not make a profit. They therefore need their game to stand out in order for them to make a profit. They also have a website which they use to promote their products. Web based information

Sports Interactive use web based information. Web based information is information which is found on the internet. They may use Wikipedia or another website like this as a source of information. They also ask members of the public to scout their local team’s players and get their advice on what certain player’s attributes should be. The members of public will come back with information in a web-based format as they would email the information to Sports Interactive. Sports Interactive will then take this information into consideration when coming up with the attributes for the different players. They also have a website which they update regularly; this website includes updates on the latest game which notifies customers. This is one of the only ways that Sports Interactive can send their customers information.