There are quite a few older articles on the net stating that records management cannot be done with SharePoint. I disagree, but it is a matter of perspective, really. In my book, SharePoint records management and metadata, I have shown that you can do records management in SharePoint. So what has changed?
Trend 1: SharePoint records management in a changing world
Records management practices go back thousands of years, to times where writings were very rare and very valuable. No small wonder that the access to this material was tightly controlled. Since collections were very small compared to today’s information overload, focus was on safely storing, rather than on easy access. The world was not as dynamic as it is nowadays, a ‘document’ was created, used and then archived. In our current practice, there is a records continuum, documents are created, used, changed, used again and changed, much of their lifetime, then finally archived and eventually disposed. SharePoint is both a document management system (DMS) and a records management system (RMS), which makes it easier to come up with solutions that support the entire life cycle of documents and records, supporting the records continuum principle. This has a few important implications:
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User perspective: there is a common user interface for document and records management with a high degree of usability, in which SharePoint document management functionality like searching, sorting, filtering and metadata is available in the records domain
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Information perspective: documents and records may use the same classification, which is operationalized within SharePoint with a content type hierarchy and (managed) metadata
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Operational perspective: there is no need for a separate records management system. This means a considerable cost saving and makes solutions less complex. SharePoint can be integrated with specialized records management systems of course, but this results in additional complexity and a suboptimal user experience.
I am assuming here that SharePoint is already in use for document management, collaboration or as an intranet portal. Introducing SharePoint as a RMS for documents on another DMS seems a bridge to far to me.
Trend 2: Cost effective records management
Archiving has traditionally been quite detached from operations. For a long time, it seemed untouched by the efficiency targets that became so dominant in organizations. One of the reasons for this may be that within the records management domain there is a focus on completeness, and there is a tendency to try to follow standards like DoD 5015.2 to the letter. Implementing and maintaining records management in this environment is both extremely complex and costly. There are two basic ways to deal with this:
- Invest more and more money and have the complexity of your business reflected in your records management system and procedures
- Make bold decisions and simplify, simplify, simplify until you have a workable and cost-effective environment
SharePoint can be the perfect tool for the second option. This requires, however, a new way of thinking. The starting point for the requirements and design should shift from the complexities that could occur to the practical situations that do occur and which can be dealt with by records management in a simple way. For SharePoint, this requires quite a deal of specific knowledge, as only a limited portion of the required functionality is branded by Microsoft as ‘records management’ and a rather large part of the overall solution is general SharePoint document management functionality. These functional areas have to be combined in a novel way.
Conclusion
SharePoint can be a great solution for records management if your aim is a cost effective, user friendly solution. A good example of this can be found on the presentation of General motors. They have a SharePoint based records management system for their 130.000 users. But governmental organizations are making the switch as well.
HOW, can records management be implemented using SharePoint?
This article (or any article for that matter) is too short to give an answer to this question. If you are interested you may consider reading my book, SharePoint records management and metadata, which can be obtained from Amazon. In the book I try to bring records management theory and practices to SharePoint and vice versa. I also guide you through the design and implementation of an end-to-end records management solution.