Digital Landfill

10 Excuses Not to Consider Document Management This Year

“New Year's Day…now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.”
--Mark Twain

 Ahhhh.  We're only two months into the year and already all those resolutions are fading.  According to numerous web sites, one of the most popular resolutions each year is to “lose weight.”  This is true.  In fact I personally make this resolution every single year without fail.  And almost immediately I come with all sorts of interesting excuses to abandon this resolution.  Among them:  1) I like the taste of beer; 2) I like bread; 3) I like pasta; and 4) Did I mention I like beer?

So if your organization has been thinking about finally embarking on that long-postponed document management resolution, let me save you the effort.  Based on my conversations with many organizations, here is a handy-dandy top 10 list of excuses to give to your management to help them avoid getting serious about document management during the coming year.  Why struggle with the guilt of information management systems that you know are nothing more than a glorified digital landfill?  Help your management quickly find the proper excuses to avoid cleaning up the digital landfill!

John’s Handy-Dandy Top 10 Excuses for Management to Avoid Document Management

1. If we need to, we can usually find it.  We usually can find the information we need when a customer calls.  Sometimes it takes a while, but once we send out an email to all staff asking for the information, it usually shows up after a bit.
2. No one will ever sue us.  Who would ever want to sue us?   I’m sure if push comes to shove we could find whatever we need to defend ourselves.  Let’s not go looking for problems.
3. We’ve got to pick our battles.  Even if it’s true that organizations typically spend $20 in labor to file a document, $120 in labor to find a misfiled document, and $220 in labor to reproduce a lost document, it’s chump change to us.  We have much bigger costs to worry about.
4. Green/schmeen.  Who cares if the average document is photocopied 19 times?  Not my problem.  I’ve got more important things to worry about.
5. It’s good for staff to be busy.  We understand that professionals can spend up to 50% of their time looking for the right information.  That’s what we pay them for.
6. It’s easier to just get everyone together in person.  If my staff needs to work together on a project, we find it more productive to send everybody a draft in advance and then have everyone fly in for a few days and sit together with all of the different versions and just hammer out the details.  Plus everyone likes staying in hotels and having nice dinners.
7. Our business isn’t located on a flood plain or anything.  Sure when we see all those paper documents floating around after a flood on the news, we feel bad for those people.  But we’re not located in a place where disasters happen.
8. Information security just isn’t at the top of our list.  Yes, we lock the doors at night.  And yes, we keep the HR files locked.  And yes we use passwords on our computers.  But we need to be flexible.  If people want to take information home and work on it on their home computers, that’s a good thing.  We trust our employees.
9. Change is expensive.  When I need to get an invoice approved, I just put it in the right department’s mailbox at the front desk.  They usually pick it up in a few days and sign it.  We file it and then every few years pack up the old files and send them to off-site storage.  Why would we want to spend money to automate something this simple?
10. This information management stuff is just too squishy.  Managing our financial assets is important to us, so we invested in a top-notch financial system.  Managing our people is important, too, so we invested in HR systems.   But when you start talking about information, it’s just not as critical as our money and people.  And managing it seems so complicated.

What’s your document or content management excuse?

Related posts:

1. 8 things you need to know about making the case for document management in a recession
2. How much document management could you buy for $1.22 million
3. Simplicity

You can follow me on Twitter at jmancini77.