Reducing the impact of poor information management on productivity
The 2019 Global Intelligent Information Management Benchmark Report undertaken by M-files discovered that 82% of employees believe poor Information Management (IM) hurts productivity and impacts large to small businesses.
As the amount of information being generated continues to grow at an exponential rate, and with the rapid digitisation of workplace processes as millions of workers were directed to work from home during COVID-19 lockdowns, it is vital that businesses review and regain control of their IM practices. Greg Milliken, senior vice president of marketing at M-Files, says businesses need to “adopt intelligent management solutions that dramatically change the way they manage and process information, enabling workers to focus on adding more value to the organisation”.
Realise productivity gains and deliver efficiencies
When regulatory authorities approach you with legal discovery orders, subpoenas, or privacy requests from customers on all their data or records being held, how confident are you that all matching records will be found?
Businesses suffer from resources wasting time spent searching multiple systems, and associated escalating IT support costs due to a number of IM control failures:
- Misfiled information in unstructured shared drives
- No naming conventions resulting in poorly titled records
- Data quality check failures
- Duplicate copies in different repositories
- Lack of version control
With the right IM governance framework, that includes policies, toolsets, procedures, and systems, you can benefit from the following:
- Digital capture, registration and distribution of incoming mail
- Realising business process efficiencies that meet set response timelines
- Responding to information requests accurately and in a timely manner to create highly valued customer experiences
- Meeting retention and privacy compliance obligations
- Defensible destruction of inactive records
- Knowing the locations of your information assets and which repository holds the single source of truth
- Managing legal holds on flagged repositories whether they are on-prem, off-prem or in the cloud
- Making fully informed and accurate business decisions
- Increased staff productivity and job satisfaction, and
- Ultimately provide expedient and improved business decision making and customer service.
Digitisation and your business
It’s a common misconception that to “go digital”, you need to scan and digitise every piece of paper that enters your business. This can be costly, overwhelming and creates a duplication of records if no retention policies are implemented. The real solution lies not in scanning every document but in knowing what to digitise and applying correct classification rules with privacy and/or security tags attached, providing process efficiencies, and keeping control of your business records and information.
There is not a “one size fits all” when it comes to digitisation of paper-based processes. The first step is to identify and understand your priority areas when transitioning to a digitised workflow. You do not need to convert all your legacy information upfront. A records sentencing project will identify inactive records that can be approved for disposal or are approaching their disposal date. Digitisation can also be done incrementally using a scan-on-demand approach.
A this-day-forward strategy to implement digital workflows does not require 100% digital storage. Low value records with minimal reference or low retention periods, for example, can remain paper based and simply be tagged with a disposal review date.
Starting or refreshing your Information Governance program?
Knowing where to start can be overwhelming, especially when managing competing priorities from internal and external stakeholders and, budgetary constraints – especially if you manage multiple vendors with different procedures and system interfaces. Running conflicting systems that are not interoperable and unable to share captured data, can lead to frustration, confusion, and business process inefficiencies.
Records management processes can be operationalised into business processes, saving you time and money when you engage a partner that provides a one-stop-shop;
- Physical records storage
- Digitisation projects and scanning
- Secure destruction, and
- Specialist IM expertise
Optimising operational efficiencies and managing costs are key objectives in any organisation. From deleting the expanding repositories of redundant, obsolete and trivial (ROT) information and simultaneously minimising data leakage risks, to regaining control and full visibility of what information you have and its location, through proven IM solutions. Integrating IM solutions into business processes can significantly reduce time spent searching for information, enables compliance with regulatory instruments and industry standards, and ensures you are meeting or exceeding customer service expectations.
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