As the old saying goes, all good things must come to an end. The AIIM team sure did save the best for last. And no, I’m not just saying that because I was a Day 3 presenter!
I’d like to share with you key takeaways from the sessions I was able to attend - Day 3.
Opening Keynote Session - The Fragmented Enterprise: ECM in the Era of Social Business – Alan Pelz-Sharpe
Alan Pelz-Sharpe believes that organizations should invest in people, process and THEN technology. I tend to agree. Even the best technology won’t work correctly unless you have smart people using it. I think the lesson here is to invest in technology that with help your users work smarter not harder.
Please see Doculabs, Lane Seversons blog for a full recap: http://laneseverson.com/2014/04/03/alan-pelz-sharpe-the-fragmented-enterprise-ecm-in-the-era-of-social-business/
Governance in the Midst of Chaos: Maintaining “Control” in the Face of Social, Mobile, and the Cloud – Nick Inglis
Nick opened his discussion by stating the obvious, “The Records Management Experiment Has Failed.” We need to stop focusing on Records Management and focus more on Retention Management. Nick asked the audience, how many organizations have complete confidence that when a document reaches the end of its lifecycle that all (physical/electronic) copies are disposed? Only one lone soul raised his hand (Heck I think he was just trying to be controversial), no surprise here! If we were to wipe the slate clean and do it all over again, which of these six methods would you choose?
· The File Room Method – Look at all information; Identify what needs to be retained.
· The Delegate Method – Everyone looks at its information; Identify what needs to be retained.
· The Keep It All Method – Don’t Identify what needs to be retained; Keep everything indefinitely.
· Records Categorization Method – Leverage classification for records identification; Automatically identify what is a Record.
· Information Categorization Method – Leverage classification for retention identification; Automatically identify what needs to be retained.
· Advanced Computing Method – Software looks at all information; Software Identifies what is a record or what needs to be retained.
Personally, I’d like to see a software company create a tool with a combination of the last two methods. It would totally take the responsibility from the end-user. That would be AWESOME!
Automating Your Information Lifecycle Process – Jim Merrifield (Me)
First of all, I’d like to personally thank everyone for attending my session. The conversation took off when I asked, “How many organizations have a document retention policy?” Nearly everyone in the room raised its hand. However, when asked “How many actually enforce the policy and actually dispose of the information at the end of its lifecycle?” Almost no one! The reality is most organizations have a document retention policy, but fail to enforce that policy. I can’t believe how many organizations are still relying on manual processes. We have to stop relying on manual processes; it’s just not practical and frankly doesn’t work. I still believe the only way to enforce policy and actually dispose of information is to automate the lifecycle process. In order to do this, we need software with the following features and capabilities:
1) Import your document retention policy and map it to each records series
2) Classify information at creation through content analytics
3) Send out email alerts once the content has reached the end of its lifecycle and can be disposed of.
These are just the highlights, I will be posting more details in a separate post.
Kick-Starting Records Management with SharePoint – Jesse Wilkins
For those of you who still think that you CAN’T do Records Management in SharePoint, I think you had better think again. Jesse shared a high level overview of the capabilities of SharePoint 2013 out of the box and then described how organizations can leverage those capabilities and actually use SharePoint as a Records Management platform. I kid you not! If your organization is NOT highly regulated, the out of the box capabilities may be good enough. However, if you are highly regulated, it may be a good idea to research some of the 3rd party add-on tools.
In any case, I’d encourage anyone who would like to take a deeper dive into SharePoint’s Records Management capabilities to enroll in AIIM’s Managing Records eDiscovery with SharePoint 2013 course. It’s well worth the investment.
http://www.aiim.org/Training/Certificate-Courses/Managing-Records-and-eDiscovery-in-SharePoint-2013
Metadata Versus Big Data – Jeffrey Lewis
It was clear from Jeffrey’s presentation that organizations in general are having a tough time understanding how to tackle Metadata and Big Data. When metadata is well managed, the information assets are more useful and valuable. Badly managed metadata can make information less valuable and a liability. Big Data analytics are helping to solve this problem, but, we still need to figure out how to #controlthechaos.
See Jeffrey’s AIIM Expert blog post for full recap: http://www.aiim.org/community/blogs/expert/Answering-Question-on-Metadata-Vs-Big-Data-and-Sharing-Helpful-Resources
PHIGs: Principles of Holistic Information Governance – Chris Walker
Chris discussed how the application of the PHIGs was a HUGE win to a gov’t public transit authority. Case Studies are my favorite type of presentations. I thought his analysis was “spot on” and the best part about it was that he did not even mention the word “RECORD” in his presentation. WAY TO GO CHRIS!!! Is that a sign of things to come?
See Chris’s AIIM Expert blog post for full recap: http://www.aiim.org/community/blogs/expert/When-Information-Becomes-a-Liability
Final Thoughts
I thoroughly enjoyed my first AIIM conference. I can’t wait till next year. Please feel free to post your comments in the fields below and lets continue this conversation.
#FileTrail #information governance
#DefensibleDisposition #retention #ElectronicRecordsManagement #InformationGovernance #Records-Management