USING INFORMATION TO MANAGE.

By Arthur B. Toan Jr. '36. New York:The Ronald Press Company, 1968. 155pp. $5.

Nowadays managers are confronted by overwhelming quantities of information, so much so that the management of this information flow, to extract intelligence useful for problem solving, has become a major task in itself. Information management requires interaction between the decision-making executive and his planning staff. The process involves several stages, whose relative importance depends on the nature of the problem to be solved. The planners identify sources of relevant information and the executive indicates how he weights conflicting evidence from different assessors. The assessors must respond on schedule with adequate accuracy. The planners then package the information for analysis, small quantities usually on paper, larger quantities in the computer. The analysis comprises more or less sophisticated mathematical and statistical techniques. Finally the executive and the planners combine to deliberate the results prior to the decision point.

As Partner in charge of Management Advisory Services for Price, Waterhouse and Company, Mr. Toan qualifies both as a responsible executive and a professional planner, able to inspect information management from both vantage points and present a balanced view.

The nine short chapters cover a wide range of business situations: assessing current corporate performance, budgeting for next year and planning two more years ahead, analyzing a varied product line to pinpoint costs and profits, managing sales, managing production and inventories, balancing the corporate cash position, delegating responsibilities as the business grows, harnessing modern tools such as computers and operations research, then finally evaluating a management information system.

Mr. Toan concentrates on general principles and a thorough overview, so the text is qualitative and descriptive. Most of the chapters are built around case histories. Roughly the pattern consists of a realistic business problem, a list of pertinent principles, a discussion of their application, and a reasonable solution. The material is up-to-date and pleasant to read. The case histories are couched in modern business vernacular, which heightens the sense of realism.

The book should find wide application as an introduction to information management. The author aims to convert old-style managers to a more systematic approach than relying on hunches or "seat-of-the-pants" judgment. Many of the sample problems describe small industrial concerns which have grown so large that the original entrepreneur becomes deluged by more information than he can absorb by traditional methods. Equally the book may help managers in large companies to appreciate the utility of the specialized computer-based staff groups which are increasingly being made available to them. It may also help individuals from other disciplines who are assigned to such staff groups as part of their career development.

A Cambridge University graduate, Mr. Turner, formerly a member of the Faculty ofthe University of London, is now a memberof the Marketing Planning Group of E. I.du Pont de Nemours & Co.