By Jean-Luc Chatelain

As the volume and complexity of information continues to grow almost exponentially, and organizations continue to try to store and manage it all, there is an increasing danger that organizations will be overwhelmed and unable to access and retain information for a myriad of business purposes.

Currently, individuals are struggling to separate the wheat from the chaff. They are challenged to distinguish business information from “noise.” They lose time trying to reconcile multiple versions of the same data, retain the wrong information; or worse, eliminate critical content that should be kept. As organizations fail to find what they need, worker productivity decreases and business risks increase. In addition, value is lost, and as a result, customer satisfaction decreases.

Passivity or business as usual is not an option. A new strategy is needed that firmly aligns business policies and processes with people and technology. To be successful, one must have an information management strategy and a solid execution plan that addresses the following eight steps:

This is the cornerstone for sustainable success of an information management strategy. A new strategy will involve investments and organizational changes. Without active and visible senior executive support and commitment, any strategy or plan will be set for failure from the beginning.

Since most organizations consist of federated yet independent business functions or silos, it's important to involve all major constituencies at all stages—from definition through implementation and ongoing monitoring of the success metrics. This is often conducted by an executive steering committee that consists of leaders from each business function. For example, HP’s committee for record management transformation is sponsored by the executive council, with members from IT, legal and individual business units.

Information management is not new. We have been managing information in one form or another since the birth of civilization. What is new is the electronic aspect of it. In nearly every organization, there are people who have been managing paper records for years. They understand how to index, classify, distribute and retain information—they are usually known as records managers, archivists and librarians.

Organizations need to leverage their domain knowledge and experience to the fullest. At times historically viewed as ‘second class citizens,’ these individuals can help provide knowledge transfer from public to private sector and from the printed world to the digital world.

It is crucial, however, to understand that you cannot simply adopt the old policies and processes and make them electronic—you will need to adapt them. For example, policies and processes for handling paper memos will not work for emails that have a different order of magnitude and contain a plethora of irrelevant content. There is a lot of ‘white noise’ in emails that don’t exist in paper: rarely did someone type a memo to say, ‘let’s grab a coffee.’

This is the most critical phase of executing a successful strategy. Policies need to be flexible to allow the organization to be agile and respond to changing markets, customer needs, business partner ecosystems and similar business changes. Policies need to be owned and executed by the business, and supported by technology. When defining policies, remember that not all information is created equal; one needs to identify the information assets that deliver business value to the organization – information that has business, decision, risk or organizational impact. An example of such information includes legal documents, product catalogs, balanced scorecards and key performance metrics. It sometimes helps to internalize the notion of policies and e-policies when defining an effective governing strategy.

Ask, "What are the essential processes needed?" Business processes define how the policies are implemented and executed across the organization. While this step seems obvious, it is often overlooked. Process flows must mirror business flows, and they must be molded to meet the users’ needs, not the other way around.

There are many examples of failed information projects where the technology attempted to force users to work in an ineffective, rigid workflow. Similar to policy definition, processes must be flexible and adaptable. Finally, a key metric for defining the success of processes is that they must improve business productivity.

As with any major change program, dialogue is most important. Be cautious to not overlook that certain terms mean different things to different people. It is very important to clearly define and document what is meant at all times. It is best to create a common vocabulary for cross team collaboration. For example, what is your organization’s definition of a corporate record? How do you define a contract?

Employee training is often underestimated and it is critical to user acceptance. Without training, policies will be ignored, processes will be short cut or, even worse, bypassed. Strategies fail when this happens. People need to know ‘why’ in addition to what and how.

For example, a policy was communicated by email that stated, ‘No MP3 player content is to be stored on computers.’ IT then runs a script every night to delete any MP3 files it finds. However, users want to listen to music while they work so each morning they re-download their MP3 files. What they don’t know is that the reason the policy was brought in was to reduce corporate liability and risk from potentially pirated copies.

Best practices for training include a planned strategy from the beginning of the project. Human resources must be consulted at this stage in order to receive the necessary support and funding. Training must aim to truly educate and not just ‘go through the motions.’ In addition, training must be repeatable in order to resonate, as well as support changes in regulations and compliance.

Technology is the means not the end. Technologies should help implement policies and execute processes faster and more accurately. As information expands, it must scale to meet new needs. It must be agile enough to respond to ever-changing business and information needs. Different sourcing models should be investigated to achieve the optimal total cost of ownership for the organization.

Today, IT manages business value, which is designed, built and delivered in the form of technology-enabled services. This increases the importance of an information management strategy since data will be consumed in a variety of new and different ways.

The once tight coupling between applications and data is being broken. Centralized ‘ownership’ of data becomes more difficult. This makes the consistency and quality of the data even more critical, putting more pressure on one’s information management strategy to also include data quality and stewardship programs to help achieve a single version of the truth.

Finally, maintain momentum and executive support by showing and communicating ongoing demonstrable business value. It is critical to measure and prove the team’s accomplishments in financial and business terms. Examples of financial and business metrics include: quantifiable impact on revenue, increased customer retention, reduced service calls and decreased inventory levels.

HP Governance and E-Discovery solutions enable organizations to apply best-practice management of information throughout its continuum from creation, through legally-enforced retention to destruction, thereby delivering better business insight, compliance and e-discovery outcomes. Learn more about HP information governance solutions.

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