"If you stay ready, you don't have to get ready"-Mom's rules and Information Gove
- Apr 1, 2017
- 2 min read
While reading an article on having a successful ECM implementation, all I could think was “why wait until you are implementing ECM software. These steps are not mutually exclusive to an ECM implementation. This is information governance”.
While having an executive sponsor and end-user involvement is crucial to implementing ECM software, the current state of the information assets is critical to how efficiently and effectively the implementation occurs.
Information assets can be ready by:
Step 1 LOCATE: Find all of the information assets in the organization. Walk the floor, look around, talk to people from different departments and functional groups. Find out what’s on the server and networked devices—and non-networked (home/personal) devices. Discover source material from every department, server, and networked device.
Step 2 CLEAN UP: Get rid of what you don’t need. If there is not a legal or business requirement to keep it, get rid of it. Studies show that 40-70% of all retained information is redundant, obsolete, and/or trivial (ROT) data. Look for personally identifiable information (PII). There is often quite a bit on older, obsolete assets that have been kept “just in case”.
Step 3 ORGANIZE: Determine if anything that is currently in a paper should be converted to electronic and collect the meta data and classify it. Make sure that everything has a retention period applied to it. This is a chance to do a secondary review of items that you have kept “just in case”.
Step 4 MAINTAIN: Now that you have gone through the necessary steps of getting control of your information assets, routinely check to make sure that the information management policies are being followed and that no one is hoarding.
Whether it’s new ECM software, a merger or acquisition, litigation, or organizational change, by maintaining your information assets in a ready state, you won’t have to get ready.
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