Milind Joshi
2008-05-06 20:09:47 UTC
Hi,
I thought members of this group might enjoy reading this article.
Best Regards,
Milind Joshi
IDEA TECHNOSOFT INC.
http://www.ideatechnosoft.com
------------
+++Where are you at? The six stages of information management
Information Management is complex. Information is everywhere, paper,
email, letters, scanned images, electronic documents, PDFs, laptops,
desktops, servers, file shares, voicemail, everywhere...
Often, even the individuals who receive information often don't know
what they have, where it is stored, who has access to it, and when it
should be purged.
Generally, companies have very little knowledge about every piece of
information within the organization.
In today's world, not only is it important to have information, but
also to know where it is, and how it can be accessed or deleted.
Everyone has been bombarded with information with how this can be
subpoenaed and that may be required in a court of law, and so on.
Not surprisingly, there are thousands of Document Management Vendors,
Records Management Experts, and Capture, Archival, Retrieval,
Retention, Destruction Solutions.
In all the noise from vendors, consultants, and industry groups, quite
often, one misses a basic and consistent "simple view". Also, most
vendors and information management strategies are directed to larger
organizations. Most organizations may not have the resources in time
and money to go out and deploy fancy EDMS implementations or hire high-
priced consultants who may or may not solve the core problems.
The article below attempts to simplify information management
practices into levels of maturity. It is not a formal framework,
though it is derived from our experience working with many different
clients across company sizes and verticals.
The main stages that information management practices are categorized
into are:
1. Chaos: Information Spread Everywhere
2. Managed Chaos: Centralized Shared Folders
3. Inching to EDMS: Shared Folder with Documented and Enforced
Practices
4. EDMS: Preliminary Electronic Document Management Software
5. ECM'ised EDMS: Rule-based Electronic Content Management
Implementation
6. Mature ECM: Mature & Automated Electronic Records & Content
Management
Where is your organization at?
------------
This article seeks only to inform. Note that there is no "good",
"bad", or "desirable" implied here.
Chaos might work perfectly for some organizations, while even Mature
ECM is always evolving for some others.
This article does not constitute professional advice or consulting.
------------
+++Stage 1: Chaos
Most organizations, big and small, whether or not they have EDMS
software or ECM software, are in this category.
Most often, these organizations are either very young and fast-
growing, or have been in business for so long in a relatively stable
environment, that the people who need access to information know very
well where to find it or they know well who knows what.
This stage of information management is characterized by people who
know it and it is not documented anywhere, file folders and paper
strewn around everywhere, emails downloaded and stored on individual
laptops and desktops, electronic documents stored on zip drives,
external drives, ad-hoc shares, email inboxes, and tidbits of
information on sticky notes.
Classic signs that "information management by chaos" is no longer
working for the organization are:
1. Lost or damaged computers cause severe disruptions
2. When certain key people go absent, no one knows where anything is
3. Customer service is suffering because people don't have adequate
access to information
4. Confidentiality is lost when information is intentionally or
inadvertently disclosed publicly
5. Information processes and workflows are so slow that competitors
are stealing business and quietly taking away market share
6. It takes too long to get anything done because the same questions
need to be answered each time
------------
+++ Stage 2: Managed Chaos: Centralized Shared Folders
Out of total chaos emerges a semblance of order and a written or
unwritten set of rules as to what information is put into a "shared
folder". This is usually on a server or a souped-up desktop and is
(hopefully) backed up regularly to independent media, and recovery is
periodically tested.
This works for smaller organizations but gets difficult to manage when
all the people in the company don't know each other or the information
management guidelines are not explicitly shared and enthusiastically
adopted by everyone who uses or accesses this information.
In many cases, this needs every member of the organization to be a
well-behaved citizen in adding, modifying, and accessing this
information, and relies on individual attention to detail to make sure
that everything is where it is supposed to be.
Often, this is also the time an organization decides to centralize
their email store, and this may or may not be on the same machine as
the server share
Classic signs that "shared folders" is no longer working for the
organization are:
1. Team size has grown a lot, and the average time a new hire spends
in the organization is smaller
2. Information is often miscategorized and people spend time finding
it and putting it in the right place
3. Information "disappears" and no one knows why or how
4. The main folder structure is so out-dated that groups and project
teams are creating ad-hoc folders and structures to suit their needs
5. People start backing up "important folders" to their own PCs "just
in case"
6. No one really knows if that letter was scanned and named properly
so they hold on to the paper copy in their file folders anyway
7. Multiple copies of records exist in various forms, everyone storing
where they can access it best from, paper, email, or personal folders
------------
+++Stage 3: Inching to EDMS: Shared Folder with Documented and
Enforced Practices
Many organizations respond to the problems of managed chaos by
investing in better training, better supervision and enforcement, and
by implementing rights, permissions, and having different
granularities in their backups to better recover from errors.
Organizations that continue to successfully use shared folders have a
well-documented set of practices that new hires are taught to follow
diligently, and top management is as committed to doing things as
documented as the front-line staff. Everyone feels some degree of
"ownership" in the information management practices.
Companies may invest in imaging solutions that allow them to scan and
archive certain paper records. Indexing the scanned images (high speed
scanners typically auto-name files with sequential numbers) could be a
problem unless a separate indexing software or process is followed.
However, management is still concerned about the overheads of managing
the process in this way, and is looking for better ways to do things.
The worst-case implementation of EDMS is that it ends up being a very
expensive shared folder that constantly grows.
Classic signs that "managed shared folder" is no longer working are:
1. It is getting difficult to schedule training for new hires and
follow up with more sessions until everyone is fully aware
2. Business is growing faster than everyone can be trained to follow
the methodology
3. Making any changes to the documented practices need all people in
the organization to meet up for several hours or days at a time
4. The information store is constantly growing, and backup media are
reaching ever-higher gargantuan sizes
5. Top Management is concerned about information leaks and not keeping
information any longer than needed
6. To avoid having to spend time changing documentation, teams make
quick-and-dirty "special practices revisions" and "exceptions"
------------
+++Stage 4: EDMS: Preliminary Electronic Document Management Software
To solve some of the problems of shared folders, companies usually
invest in some kind of electronic document management software,
whether internally hosted or with the Software-as-a-Service model.
The first instinct is to replicate the structure of the shared
folders, maybe link existing OS login IDs to the DMS, follow basic
indexing practices, make some index fields mandatory, and so on. The
EDMS now makes enforcing of the shared folders guidelines much easier.
In many organizations, the use of the EDMS stops there, it is used as
a more organized replacement to shared folders, especially now that
documents can be versioned, activities can be tracked, etc.
Factors like platform, cost, availability, reliability, ease-of-use,
vendor dependence, and other factors come into play while choosing an
EDMS, with trade-offs made to reduce costs or increase ease-of-use.
The limits of a normal EDMS are when the following starts to happen:
1. Users start to complain of the repetitive nature of "getting the
document in" and fail to do it regularly, either because they are
pressed for time, or don't see the benefits
2. Index fields are entered wrongly or shortcuts and workarounds are
found to save time getting documents "in"
3. Versioning is in place, but often users have no idea which version
of a given document is important, for example, which one was shared
with customer in last week's presentation.
4. As the size of the document store increases, management starts to
worry about backup and restore, vendor dependence, the cost to move
from entry-level DMS to enterprise-category software, training costs,
maintenance costs, etc.
5. Because workflows for common tasks are not automated, users still
have to remember the exact ways of doing something or moving a work
document along the chain.
6. Even if content was indexed, users cannot find it because the
retrieval function of entry-level EDMS systems isn't very evolved.
7. As with shared folders, teams begin to create "private
repositories" inside the EDMS so they can do things in a way that
suits their needs
------------
+++Stage 5: ECM'ised EDMS: Rule-based Electronic Content Management
Implementation
This is the next step after deploying an entry-level EDMS and running
into issues. Either the same EDMS that was used initially is used, or
a new software or service is selected and content is either migrated
to the new store or not.
The difference is that the teams have recognized that there is a need
to automate the workflow for common business tasks so that user
training can be minimized and information can be found in a consistent
way. Retention rules are also specified and organization knows exactly
when a piece of content "expires" from the content repository.
This is typically a relatively expensive exercise, and organizations
not only have to find a budget to cover licensing costs, but also the
consulting and customization work that needs to be performed to
implement the rules and workflow. In addition key stake-holders and
users have to budget time and resource availability to provide domain
knowledge to the implementers. This process is somewhat less painful
if internal IT and organizational teams have the ability to perform
basic customizations themselves.
When an organization has reached this level of information management
maturity, they are usually either a medium-sized or large
organization.
The problems that characterize their desire to move to something
better arise from:
1. The time it takes to index content as it goes in, and the manual
steps in the decision-making are an expensive part of using the
system.
2. There is a need to respond quicker and better to items within the
content framework, say an angry email is best routed to the most
experienced customer service representatives, or a letter from a
government agency or legal firm goes to the right person immediately
without any delays.
3. The rules of the game change often, and a rule-based system that
needs continual updating by expert integrators is expensive
4. Worst-case performance with finding content, because users often
find ways to circumvent rules
5. Vendor dependency is a major issue - what happens if the EDMS
vendor goes out of business or drastically changes their product
offering? What happens if integration and maintenance charges go up
significantly?
------------
+++Stage 6: Mature & Automated Electronic Records Management
This stage is reached when organizations have attempted to deploy the
best possible solution based on solution technical superiority, strong
knowledge of the business process, metrics from users about input and
retrieval efficiencies, requirement to increase efficiencies and
gather information about usage patterns and automate meta-data
capture, and a strong view to reducing or eliminating vendor
dependence.
Such a solution is characterized by the following points:
1. The electronic content management system uses an industry-standard
database, industry-standard file formats, and data is stored in an
openly accessible manner, to those with the necessary administrative
privileges and technical skills. The data store format is well-
documented and shared with the user organization.
2. Systems are put into place to automatically capture more meta-data
such as keywords, document length, user profile, file format, and
document content index.
3. Usage meta-data such as who accessed content, when they accessed
it, for how long it was accessed, the search terms used to get to the
content, item popularity, etc., are used to generate reports on
content usage to help better plan resource and budget allocations.
4. Automatically generated meta-data can help organizations find
content easier and detect patterns in content access and usage,
leading to better decisions on resources and budgets.
5. The rules used to define and control content workflow are
accessible and modifiable by authorized users with minimal training
and technical expertise.
6. Transitioning to another ECM system or EDMS is a viable exercise
and the costs and benefits of staying with current solution vs. going
to a new solution are well-known.
------------
No matter where you are at, awareness of where you are at is key, and
so is the knowledge of where you want to go!
Make us a part of your journey!
Sincerely,
Milind Joshi
IDEA TECHNOSOFT INC.
http://www.ideatechnosoft.com
I thought members of this group might enjoy reading this article.
Best Regards,
Milind Joshi
IDEA TECHNOSOFT INC.
http://www.ideatechnosoft.com
------------
+++Where are you at? The six stages of information management
Information Management is complex. Information is everywhere, paper,
email, letters, scanned images, electronic documents, PDFs, laptops,
desktops, servers, file shares, voicemail, everywhere...
Often, even the individuals who receive information often don't know
what they have, where it is stored, who has access to it, and when it
should be purged.
Generally, companies have very little knowledge about every piece of
information within the organization.
In today's world, not only is it important to have information, but
also to know where it is, and how it can be accessed or deleted.
Everyone has been bombarded with information with how this can be
subpoenaed and that may be required in a court of law, and so on.
Not surprisingly, there are thousands of Document Management Vendors,
Records Management Experts, and Capture, Archival, Retrieval,
Retention, Destruction Solutions.
In all the noise from vendors, consultants, and industry groups, quite
often, one misses a basic and consistent "simple view". Also, most
vendors and information management strategies are directed to larger
organizations. Most organizations may not have the resources in time
and money to go out and deploy fancy EDMS implementations or hire high-
priced consultants who may or may not solve the core problems.
The article below attempts to simplify information management
practices into levels of maturity. It is not a formal framework,
though it is derived from our experience working with many different
clients across company sizes and verticals.
The main stages that information management practices are categorized
into are:
1. Chaos: Information Spread Everywhere
2. Managed Chaos: Centralized Shared Folders
3. Inching to EDMS: Shared Folder with Documented and Enforced
Practices
4. EDMS: Preliminary Electronic Document Management Software
5. ECM'ised EDMS: Rule-based Electronic Content Management
Implementation
6. Mature ECM: Mature & Automated Electronic Records & Content
Management
Where is your organization at?
------------
This article seeks only to inform. Note that there is no "good",
"bad", or "desirable" implied here.
Chaos might work perfectly for some organizations, while even Mature
ECM is always evolving for some others.
This article does not constitute professional advice or consulting.
------------
+++Stage 1: Chaos
Most organizations, big and small, whether or not they have EDMS
software or ECM software, are in this category.
Most often, these organizations are either very young and fast-
growing, or have been in business for so long in a relatively stable
environment, that the people who need access to information know very
well where to find it or they know well who knows what.
This stage of information management is characterized by people who
know it and it is not documented anywhere, file folders and paper
strewn around everywhere, emails downloaded and stored on individual
laptops and desktops, electronic documents stored on zip drives,
external drives, ad-hoc shares, email inboxes, and tidbits of
information on sticky notes.
Classic signs that "information management by chaos" is no longer
working for the organization are:
1. Lost or damaged computers cause severe disruptions
2. When certain key people go absent, no one knows where anything is
3. Customer service is suffering because people don't have adequate
access to information
4. Confidentiality is lost when information is intentionally or
inadvertently disclosed publicly
5. Information processes and workflows are so slow that competitors
are stealing business and quietly taking away market share
6. It takes too long to get anything done because the same questions
need to be answered each time
------------
+++ Stage 2: Managed Chaos: Centralized Shared Folders
Out of total chaos emerges a semblance of order and a written or
unwritten set of rules as to what information is put into a "shared
folder". This is usually on a server or a souped-up desktop and is
(hopefully) backed up regularly to independent media, and recovery is
periodically tested.
This works for smaller organizations but gets difficult to manage when
all the people in the company don't know each other or the information
management guidelines are not explicitly shared and enthusiastically
adopted by everyone who uses or accesses this information.
In many cases, this needs every member of the organization to be a
well-behaved citizen in adding, modifying, and accessing this
information, and relies on individual attention to detail to make sure
that everything is where it is supposed to be.
Often, this is also the time an organization decides to centralize
their email store, and this may or may not be on the same machine as
the server share
Classic signs that "shared folders" is no longer working for the
organization are:
1. Team size has grown a lot, and the average time a new hire spends
in the organization is smaller
2. Information is often miscategorized and people spend time finding
it and putting it in the right place
3. Information "disappears" and no one knows why or how
4. The main folder structure is so out-dated that groups and project
teams are creating ad-hoc folders and structures to suit their needs
5. People start backing up "important folders" to their own PCs "just
in case"
6. No one really knows if that letter was scanned and named properly
so they hold on to the paper copy in their file folders anyway
7. Multiple copies of records exist in various forms, everyone storing
where they can access it best from, paper, email, or personal folders
------------
+++Stage 3: Inching to EDMS: Shared Folder with Documented and
Enforced Practices
Many organizations respond to the problems of managed chaos by
investing in better training, better supervision and enforcement, and
by implementing rights, permissions, and having different
granularities in their backups to better recover from errors.
Organizations that continue to successfully use shared folders have a
well-documented set of practices that new hires are taught to follow
diligently, and top management is as committed to doing things as
documented as the front-line staff. Everyone feels some degree of
"ownership" in the information management practices.
Companies may invest in imaging solutions that allow them to scan and
archive certain paper records. Indexing the scanned images (high speed
scanners typically auto-name files with sequential numbers) could be a
problem unless a separate indexing software or process is followed.
However, management is still concerned about the overheads of managing
the process in this way, and is looking for better ways to do things.
The worst-case implementation of EDMS is that it ends up being a very
expensive shared folder that constantly grows.
Classic signs that "managed shared folder" is no longer working are:
1. It is getting difficult to schedule training for new hires and
follow up with more sessions until everyone is fully aware
2. Business is growing faster than everyone can be trained to follow
the methodology
3. Making any changes to the documented practices need all people in
the organization to meet up for several hours or days at a time
4. The information store is constantly growing, and backup media are
reaching ever-higher gargantuan sizes
5. Top Management is concerned about information leaks and not keeping
information any longer than needed
6. To avoid having to spend time changing documentation, teams make
quick-and-dirty "special practices revisions" and "exceptions"
------------
+++Stage 4: EDMS: Preliminary Electronic Document Management Software
To solve some of the problems of shared folders, companies usually
invest in some kind of electronic document management software,
whether internally hosted or with the Software-as-a-Service model.
The first instinct is to replicate the structure of the shared
folders, maybe link existing OS login IDs to the DMS, follow basic
indexing practices, make some index fields mandatory, and so on. The
EDMS now makes enforcing of the shared folders guidelines much easier.
In many organizations, the use of the EDMS stops there, it is used as
a more organized replacement to shared folders, especially now that
documents can be versioned, activities can be tracked, etc.
Factors like platform, cost, availability, reliability, ease-of-use,
vendor dependence, and other factors come into play while choosing an
EDMS, with trade-offs made to reduce costs or increase ease-of-use.
The limits of a normal EDMS are when the following starts to happen:
1. Users start to complain of the repetitive nature of "getting the
document in" and fail to do it regularly, either because they are
pressed for time, or don't see the benefits
2. Index fields are entered wrongly or shortcuts and workarounds are
found to save time getting documents "in"
3. Versioning is in place, but often users have no idea which version
of a given document is important, for example, which one was shared
with customer in last week's presentation.
4. As the size of the document store increases, management starts to
worry about backup and restore, vendor dependence, the cost to move
from entry-level DMS to enterprise-category software, training costs,
maintenance costs, etc.
5. Because workflows for common tasks are not automated, users still
have to remember the exact ways of doing something or moving a work
document along the chain.
6. Even if content was indexed, users cannot find it because the
retrieval function of entry-level EDMS systems isn't very evolved.
7. As with shared folders, teams begin to create "private
repositories" inside the EDMS so they can do things in a way that
suits their needs
------------
+++Stage 5: ECM'ised EDMS: Rule-based Electronic Content Management
Implementation
This is the next step after deploying an entry-level EDMS and running
into issues. Either the same EDMS that was used initially is used, or
a new software or service is selected and content is either migrated
to the new store or not.
The difference is that the teams have recognized that there is a need
to automate the workflow for common business tasks so that user
training can be minimized and information can be found in a consistent
way. Retention rules are also specified and organization knows exactly
when a piece of content "expires" from the content repository.
This is typically a relatively expensive exercise, and organizations
not only have to find a budget to cover licensing costs, but also the
consulting and customization work that needs to be performed to
implement the rules and workflow. In addition key stake-holders and
users have to budget time and resource availability to provide domain
knowledge to the implementers. This process is somewhat less painful
if internal IT and organizational teams have the ability to perform
basic customizations themselves.
When an organization has reached this level of information management
maturity, they are usually either a medium-sized or large
organization.
The problems that characterize their desire to move to something
better arise from:
1. The time it takes to index content as it goes in, and the manual
steps in the decision-making are an expensive part of using the
system.
2. There is a need to respond quicker and better to items within the
content framework, say an angry email is best routed to the most
experienced customer service representatives, or a letter from a
government agency or legal firm goes to the right person immediately
without any delays.
3. The rules of the game change often, and a rule-based system that
needs continual updating by expert integrators is expensive
4. Worst-case performance with finding content, because users often
find ways to circumvent rules
5. Vendor dependency is a major issue - what happens if the EDMS
vendor goes out of business or drastically changes their product
offering? What happens if integration and maintenance charges go up
significantly?
------------
+++Stage 6: Mature & Automated Electronic Records Management
This stage is reached when organizations have attempted to deploy the
best possible solution based on solution technical superiority, strong
knowledge of the business process, metrics from users about input and
retrieval efficiencies, requirement to increase efficiencies and
gather information about usage patterns and automate meta-data
capture, and a strong view to reducing or eliminating vendor
dependence.
Such a solution is characterized by the following points:
1. The electronic content management system uses an industry-standard
database, industry-standard file formats, and data is stored in an
openly accessible manner, to those with the necessary administrative
privileges and technical skills. The data store format is well-
documented and shared with the user organization.
2. Systems are put into place to automatically capture more meta-data
such as keywords, document length, user profile, file format, and
document content index.
3. Usage meta-data such as who accessed content, when they accessed
it, for how long it was accessed, the search terms used to get to the
content, item popularity, etc., are used to generate reports on
content usage to help better plan resource and budget allocations.
4. Automatically generated meta-data can help organizations find
content easier and detect patterns in content access and usage,
leading to better decisions on resources and budgets.
5. The rules used to define and control content workflow are
accessible and modifiable by authorized users with minimal training
and technical expertise.
6. Transitioning to another ECM system or EDMS is a viable exercise
and the costs and benefits of staying with current solution vs. going
to a new solution are well-known.
------------
No matter where you are at, awareness of where you are at is key, and
so is the knowledge of where you want to go!
Make us a part of your journey!
Sincerely,
Milind Joshi
IDEA TECHNOSOFT INC.
http://www.ideatechnosoft.com