Blogs

This article was written primarily by my partner Scott Murchison, CRM, VP of RIM Services for Kaizen InfoSource.  There are more laws to be presented next week.

Information management looks many ways to different people, but there are some standards that will always apply, no matter whether you have an ECM system or not.

1. The customer is always right…to their face. The one screaming loudest is always the one who had the information to begin with. Just let them blow off their steam—then, find the information and fix it.
2. “So what? Now what?” – placing blame is counter-productive. First, fix the immediate issue; then, examine the business process that created the issue to solve the underlying problem.
3. Show the Wizard, not the man behind the curtain. Users don’t care what hoops were jumped through to find the information; they just want the information.
4. “B” comes after “A”, “C” comes after “B”…“2” comes after “1”, “3” comes after “2”…
5. You set up the system and the related business processes; USE them! Manage the documents and document the management…thoroughly.
6. When looking for a needle in a haystack, it’s in the bottom at the back.
7. If it has been piled in the basement under a pile of junk…IT is junk. The 90/10 Rule applies—chuck the 90% that is junk and keep the 10% treasures.
8. Your word is your reputation; keep one by keeping the other. Don’t offer it if you can’t do it.
9. Service sells services. If you offer it, they will come. Conversely, if you don’t, they won’t.
10. Pro-active is better than re-active. If you’re actively tackling the management of your organization’s information rather than putting out fires, you’re moving in the right direction.

These all sound like easy steps and solutions, but so often, information management professionals forget the basics in favor of a complicated—and expensive—ECM solution. They expect that the new content management solution will solve those duplication issues, or give everyone access to the content in a way that they want it. That may happen; or, it may be that you are laying down an expensive solution on top of already convoluted business processes and hoping the ECM solution will magically solve your problems.

Stick to the basics of information management first and then the right tool to allow you to more efficiently access and manage what you have will find you.