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This paper aims to review the information management aspects of the early months of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) coronavirus 19 outbreak. It shows that the transition from epidemic to the pandemic was caused partly by poor management of information that was publicly available in January 2020.

The approach combines public domain epidemic data with economic, demographic, health, social and political data and investigates how information was managed by governments. It includes case studies of early-stage information management, from countries with high and low coronavirus disease 2019 impacts (as measured by deaths per million).

The reasons why the information was not acted upon appropriately include “dark side” information behaviours (Stone et al., 2019). Many errors and misjudgements could have been avoided by using learnings from previous epidemics, particularly the 1918-1919 flu epidemic when international travel (mainly of troops in First World War) was a prime mode of spreading. It concludes that if similar outbreaks are not to turn into pandemics, much earlier action is needed, mainly closing borders and locking-down.

The research is based on what was known at the time of writing, when the pandemic’s exact origin was uncertain, when some statistics about actions and results were unavailable and when final results were unknown.

Governments faced with early warning signs or pandemics must act much faster.

If the next virus is as infectious as SARS-CoV-2 but much more fatal, the world faces disastrous consequences if most governments act as slowly as this time.

This is one of the first analyses of information management practices relating to the pandemic’s early stages.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relevance of academic research, in terms of the topic match, to commercial practise in information technology, using the case study of a large and very rapidly growing supplier that uses leading-edge management approaches, Salesforce.com.

Academic literature review and review of commercial literature and information published by Salesforce.com.

Academics’ choice of topics matches the issues and topics present in the development of Salesforce.com, but suffers from the lack of interdisciplinary approach and particularly fails to integrate technical, marketing and financial approaches.

The case study is of only one company, though an important one, although other large companies are involved e.g. Amazon Web services. However, the approach could easily be widened to several companies.

The case study approach will help academics focus on creating more applicable research and help students to learn about companies and may also eventually help practitioners to create thought leadership.

If the financial and economic aspects of such case studies are integrated with other business aspects, these will provide a better view of the positive (or negative) contribution made by companies such as the one in the case study.

This is the first time that a case study has been examined in the context of the relevance/rigour debate.