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Erica Johnson, Enterprise Content Management Specialist at Freeport-McMorRan Copper & Gold, is our first member of the week nominated by a co-worker. I’ll let Greg Fitzgerald, who nominated Erica, take it from here:

Erica has always been a key member of our Records Management team here at Freeport McMoRan. In addition to the fantastic work she has done on our Retention Policy when it was filled with over 600 classifications and the work she has done to whittle those down to a more user-friendly large bucket format, she has also taken on a significant amount of responsibility in our implementation of SharePoint.

Her expertise in Records Management and the use of Taxonomies and Retention have been invaluable in the SharePoint migration project and it has been a pleasure working with her on it. Since we are now about a year and a half into our SharePoint migration project, we have had a number of guinea pig-type issues to deal with. Throughout it all Erica has been fantastic in providing information that is key to our organization when it comes to electronic records and retention.

Erica is a great person, a fantastic coworker, and more importantly a great friend and I think she would be a fantastic choice for Member of the Week.

Duhon: What do you do and how did you get there?

Johnson: I’m the Sr. Enterprise Content Management Specialist at Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold. I manage the taxonomy, SharePoint 2010 term store, and records retention schedule for the company. After receiving my MILS, I decided to go into corporate records because it offered the challenge I was looking for. I started as a records analyst but with the implementation of the SharePoint 2010 roll-out a few years ago, I was given the opportunity to focus specifically on ECM. So, here I am.

Duhon: What was your best day at work? Worst?

Johnson: My best day was the day I was promoted to the ECM Specialist position. It validated the career choices I had made thus far and made the future a promising one.

As part of my records analyst role at Freeport I used to work on a large-scale indexing project in an old makeup manufacturing plant in Phoenix. It was a lot of hard work and not a pleasant environment. I also have an insect phobia. So, every day there was my worst day.

Duhon: What are you proudest of?

Johnson: My level of commitment to a project despite any challenges or roadblocks. I have a strong work ethic and I am a perfectionist. It shows in my work product.

Duhon: Greg said that you created a large bucket format for retention. Why did you decide to go that route and what are the advantages of doing it that way?

Johnson: Our previous schedule was really long with 640+ classifications and it was too much of a burden on the user. So, being that we are user advocates, we decided to develop a classification scheme of 30 categories/buckets. Not only is it more user friendly, it’s easier to use SharePoint’s records management functionality with a shorter list of classifications (or content types).

Duhon: What is your No. 1. goal today—and what is your greatest content-related challenge?

Johnson: My No. 1 goal is to see the successful completion of the SharePoint 2010 program. As most are aware, this type of project poses many challenges, but, the benefits of success outweigh the struggle to change. My greatest content-related challenge at the moment is how to manage systems. One system may contain data from Sales, Transportation/Logistics, and Manufacturing; all of which have different retention requirements. How do you manage these records and comply with the retention schedule when the data, while very distinct and separate, is compiled into one system for reporting purposes? There are a number of solutions, none of which are perfect.

Duhon: Can you give us one lesson learned from implementing SharePoint that could help someone else?

Johnson: Change management is essential. We’ve heard it a million times but it’s the absolute number one issue we have. It’s worth taking more time to build something the user wants rather than what you might want to give them. They’re more likely to use SharePoint if it’s easy to use and it increases efficiency. Of course, this takes time to accomplish when we’re often rushed to get a project complete. However, it will take less time to transition to SharePoint if it’s done right the first time.

Duhon: Why do you consider yourself an information professional?

Johnson: Ha. All of the above. There’s nothing I don’t do that doesn’t involve the management of information whether it’s electronic or paper.

Just for fun:

Duhon: What are your three favorite websites?

Johnson: IMDB, Amazon, and Wikipedia. I love to shop and watch movies usually at the same time. Also, I tend to be a know-it-all, or try to, and Wikipedia is a great resource for know-it-alls (please no lectures from any fellow librarians…of course I don’t use it as a reference J).

Duhon: What are the three greatest books ever written—and what’s on your nightstand today?

Johnson: Crime and Punishment, The Great Gatsby, and Romeo and Juliet (or Hamlet). I’m currently reading A Discovery of Witches – if you’re a librarian, I highly recommend it.

Duhon: What are the three greatest movies of all time—and what’s the last one you’ve seen?

Johnson: The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King. Can you tell I’m a Lord of the Rings fan? I just saw Contraband with Mark Wahlberg. It’s not a great movie, but it was entertaining.

Duhon: What was your first concert—and what are the three greatest songs on your iPod?

Johnson: Cheap Trick in the late 80s. I was very young but I remember having a great time.
On my iPod: 1) Adele’s One and Only, 2) Counting Crow’s Rain King, and 3) Green Day’s Jesus of Suburbia.