Digital Landfill

The following "fast facts" are drawn from the AIIM Industry Watch research reports.  Download the original reports -- all are free -- all you need to do is register.

1. The volume of paper records is still increasing steadily in 56% of organizations, but in 22% it is at last showing signs of decreasing. Meanwhile the volume of electronic records is “increasing rapidly” for 70%, and unsurprisingly, is not decreasing for any.
2. Half of organizations are scanning newly received paper items and filing them electronically rather than manually, and a third of businesses are looking to go to all-electronic records-keeping
3. But for the other half, as well as manually filing inbound paper documents, 40% admit to routinely printing newly generated office documents and emails for the purpose of filing them as paper records.
4. Electronic records are more than twice as likely to be described as “Unmanaged” than paper records.
5. 71% of organizations have a procedure for legal hold of paper records in the event of litigation, but only 57% have one for electronic records.
6. For 25% of organizations, legal discovery of paper records would take at least a month, whereas for electronic records this is 17%.
7. There is a reliance on IT staff to carry out legal discovery on electronic records in the majority of companies, whereas records management staff or line-of-business staff deal with paper records.
8. 13% of organizations are using dedicated e-discovery tools and a further 22% are planning to do so. 42% are utilizing their ECM/ERM suites for e-discovery and 12% are using Enterprise Search.
9. Of those organizations with no ECM/ERM system, 60% would not be confident, if challenged, that their electronic records have not been changed, deleted or inappropriately accessed.
10. 38% of those polled admit that there is little or no enforcement of their records management policies and 55% set no guidance on dealing with important emails as records.
11. 31% of organizations have 20 or more content repositories that could usefully be linked, with email as the highest priority content.
12. 35% are using in-house developed links to join up repositories and a further 28% are using vendor custom-developed links. CMIS (Content Management Interoperability Services specification) has gained traction in just 15% of organizations as yet.
13. Half of organizations would “possibly” store records in a local, identifiable outsource, but 77% state they would never use a public cloud (e.g., Google, Amazon or Microsoft) even if they were assured of an onshore storage location. However, 67% would consider a corporate or government cloud.
14. Two thirds of organizations store a significant proportion of their records in native formats such as Word and Excel, although a third plan to converge to PDF-A over the next 3 years.
15. Over 70% of organizations have made no plans or provision for long-term archiving of electronic records, with no policies for migrating to new media, translating formats, or virtualization of applications.
16. Spending on Records Management systems and modules is expected to be up overall in the next 12 months. Consultancy Services show a slight net fall.
17. On average, our respondents spend more than an hour and a half per day processing their emails, with one in five spending three or more hours of their day.
18. Over half have hand-held access by phones, Blackberries and PDAs. Two-thirds process work-related emails out of office hours with 28% confessing to doing so “after work, on weekends and during vacations”.
19. “Sheer overload” is reported as the biggest problem with email as a business tool, followed closely by “Finding and recovering past emails” and “Keeping track of actions”.
20. Email archiving, legal discovery, findability and storage volumes are the biggest current concerns within organizations, with security and spam now considered less of a concern by our respondents.
21. Over half of respondents are “not confident” or only “slightly confident” that emails related to documenting commitments and obligations made by staff are recorded, complete, and retrievable.
22. Only 10% of organizations have completed an enterprise-wide email management initiative, with 20% currently rolling out a project. Even in larger organizations, 17% have no plans to, although the remaining 29% are planning to start sometime in the next 2 years.
23. Some 45% of organizations (including the largest ones) do not have a policy on Outlook “Archive settings” so most users will likely create .pst archive files on local drives.
24. Only 19% of those surveyed capture important emails to a dedicated email management system or to a general purpose ECM system. 18% print emails and file as paper, and a worrying 45% file in nonshared personal Outlook folders.
25. A third of organizations have no policy to deal with legal discovery, 40% would likely have to search back-up tapes, and 23% feel they would have gaps from deleted emails. Only 16% have retention policies that would justify deleted emails.
26. Overall, respondents plan to spend more on Email Management software in 2009 than 2008.
27. Compared to recent years, cost saving has taken a clear lead over compliance as the main business driver for investments in document and records management.
28. Email is still out of control, with 55% of organizations having little or no confidence that important emails are recorded, complete and retrievable.
29. 28% of organizations would take more than a month to produce documents for a legal discovery process.
30. There is still a wide disparity in how organizations view SharePoint relative to their overall content management needs and strategies. In 29% of organizations, SharePoint is working in competition with, or in parallel with existing ECM, Document Management (DM) or Records Management (RM) suites, compared to 16% where it is integrated with existing suites and 12% where it is considered to be the only ECM suite. The remainder use SharePoint to “fill in some functions”.
31. Records managers are often being left out of the equation. In 36% of large organizations, IT is managing the SharePoint roll out with no input from the Records Management Department. A further 14% admit that no one is in charge and it’s completely out-of-control.
32. The single ECM system concept is still alive in 35% of organizations, whereas 33% plan to use a single sign-on portal to link together multiple repositories – SharePoint being the most popular tool for doing so - with 9% stating they will use Enterprise Search to solve this problem.
33. Licence sales in the main areas of DM and RM are set to hold steady in 2009, with falls likely in scanner hardware, non-vendor consulting services and, surprisingly, outsourcing and bureau services.
34. As regards management of content types, SMS/text messages, blogs and wikis are largely off the corporate radar in 75% of organizations. Their lack of inclusion in the corporate archive is a major risk.
35. Corporate understanding of what Enterprise 2.0 is and how it could help the business has doubled in the last year with only 17% still having no idea what it is.
36. Over half of organizations consider Enterprise 2.0 to be “important” or “very important” to their business goals and success. Only 25% are actually doing anything about it, but this is up from 13% in 2008. Knowledge-sharing, collaboration and responsiveness are considered the biggest drivers. Lack of understanding, corporate culture and cost are the biggest impediments.
37. IT departments are by far the strongest users, with 68% using Enterprise 2.0. In contrast, only 6% of organizations are using it throughout the business.
38. 21% of organizations use Enterprise 2.0 for viral marketing.
39. 27% of people aged 18-30 consider Twitter is an important rapid-feedback tool for business. Only 7% of those over 45 agree.
40. 35% of our sample are using or accessing Twitter for their personal life, with 19% using it for business. 18-30’s are twice as likely to use it as over 45’s. 21% of the younger group use it during work hours.
41. Consumer-to-contributor ratio in personal use is 2 to 1, but in business use it is 50:50. Follower to followed ratio is 2 to 1.
42. 68% think that professional networking on the web is vital to career progression.
43. LinkedIn is twice as popular as Facebook for business networking, with over 50% having an account.
44. 71% agree that it’s easier to locate “knowledge” on the Web than it is to find it on internal systems.
45. 47% of 18-30s and 31% of over 45’s expect to use the same type of networking tools with business colleagues as with friends and family.
46. 40% feel it is important to have Enterprise 2.0 facilities within their ECM suite, with SharePoint TeamSites as the most likely collaboration platform.
47. Only 29% of organizations are extending their collaboration tools and project sites beyond the firewall.
48. As regards governance of usage and content, only 30% of companies have policies on blogs, forums and social networks, compared to 88% who have policies for email.
49. Whereas almost all companies would not dream of sending out un-approved press releases or web pages, less than 1 in 5 have any sign-off procedures for blogs, forums and even the company’s Wikipedia entry.
50. Despite one-in-ten organizations having had legal, staff or customer issues with blogs and social networks, only 1 in 3 have a blanket regulation absolving themselves from personal posts by staff.
51. Planned spending on Enterprise 2.0 projects in the next 12 months is up in all product areas.

The above "fast facts" are drawn from the AIIM Industry Watch research reports.  Download the original reports -- all are free -- all you need to do is register.