Those of you with about two decades in your career have witnessed and no doubt benefited from quantum changes in the speed of business information. From FedEx™ and fax machines to dial-up Internet and email to ubiquitous IM and handheld device video chat, information flows with increasing velocity in such a way that speed has become a competitive imperative for many firms. Similarly, from my corporate development days I remember my first transactions and making multiple flights across the Atlantic to physically sit in a data room to take notes from a bookcase of binders and boxes of files. The use of a Virtual Data Room (VDR) to support a deal was transformative – not just from the personal benefit of not traveling for diligence, but more importantly from the speed in which information can be reviewed, distributed to team members and analyzed in parallel fashion. The information now travels to the best possible resource regardless of location.

This is the next in a series of guest blog posts by IntraLinks’ collaborators, partners, and vendors. Janine Hirt is the Head of Membership Development & Editor for the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce a vibrant organization headquartered in New York City.  The Chamber is dedicated to forging stronger trade and business ties between Brazil and the United States through seminars, major conferences, roundtables, publications and other member services.

With the upcoming 2014 World Cup, the 2016 Olympic Games, and its impressively quick recovery from the recent financial crisis, the world’s eyes are now on Brazil as a strong and stable economy brimming with investment and business opportunities.

I recently spoke at the Argyle Corporate Counsel Leadership Forum in Chicago, Illinois. It was a great opportunity to meet counsel from many different businesses, and share some very interesting ideas.

I started working at IntraLinks earlier this year and began my first day, as new employees generally do, by reading everything on the company intranet site, meeting with key team members and my manager to understand the goals and priorities for online marketing as well as key challenges for this year.

In today’s world, we are required to process more information from an increasing number of sources in order to make sound decisions. How can we survive this information avalanche?

Organize your information

Both professionals and consumers alike tend to organize their digital information in hierarchies because computer filing systems impose a hierarchical structure of folders. Document location serves as the main organizing principle. Additional restrictions — e.g. a document should appear in only one location — then forces users to come up with strict categorization of document types.

Although a systematic filing structure potentially makes information more accessible, studies of real-world document collections show that categorization schemas are far less stable. Problems generally fall into the following categories: