1. Introduction

Every organisation and business needs information in order to operate. Even if they collect, collate and produce the information themselves, there is always going to be a cost - information is never free.

The four main costs involved in producing any information are:

• hardware
• software
• consumables
• manpower

We will look at each of these factors in a little more detail over the next few pages.

Use the menu on the left-hand side to navigate through the pages.