is WW Product Marketing Manager for HP Software & Solutions and is focused on marketing HP TRIM Records Management solutions. For more information about HP Information Management solutions please visit www.hp.com/go/imhub.
[Note: Managing collaborative and informal content will be explored in more detail at our upcoming seminar series. Have you registered for the AIIM Information Management seminar in your city? It's FREE. Sign up for the on .]
8 Ways to Make Sure That Collaboration Adds Business Value
Collaboration is a business process and we have been collaborating long before computing technology changed the landscape. Building a ship a few hundred years ago required collaboration and project management to achieve an outcome. Evidence of such collaboration was carefully documented and managed on paper. We now collaborate with powerful technological tools that allow us to deliver outcomes faster. What needs to be considered in the race for faster communication and collaboration is maintaining adequate controls in order to minimize business risk.
When looking to collaborative tools consider this…
1 -- Collaboration is part of a process.
Let’s look at the productivity benefits of collaboration. In isolation there is no doubt that with modern collaborative tools we communicate and make decisions faster. Does that mean it’s good for the overall business need? Think about a highly regulated industry where decisions made without control mechanisms in place and the ability to audit those processes puts the business at risk of Government or court imposed penalties.
Organizations need to deliver products, services and outcomes efficiently and effectively and do this within internal governance constraints and in accordance with the legislative rules and regulations. In this context we should consider collaboration as events and processes that are a subset of broader executive set business outcomes. Records management controls should therefore be established over collaborative processes to reduce the risk of adverse business consequences.
2 -- Control is essential.
Organizations always consider risk and benefits when making decisions. This applies to how we manage the information that is part of business activities. For example in the context of information, poor records management introduces risk of inefficient business processes, inability to deliver services efficiently, high cost of products and services, bad publicity, and the inability to bring information to hand to defend or prosecute legal action.
Control of information processes is critical to reduce risk. This applies to the most fundamental of decision making processes, collaboration. Without collecting evidence of collaboration, a black hole of information will exist as to why certain decisions are made. Without control and good record keeping, collaboration is no more than idle chit chat, albeit well intentioned. Without control, ad hoc decisions without consultation with corporate policy may see critical business information inappropriately retained or destroyed, or not even captured which can result in operational, legal and financial risk.
3 -- Records management is a discipline.
When adopting new technologies, it is easy to lose site of the broader business implications of a new technology. Take for example the viral adoption of email. Whilst communication became instantaneous with decisions made quickly, the consequences that lack of control caused it still apparent today. Collaboration tools using Web 2.0 content is the new widely adopted solution that is permeating business operations. It is the role of information specialists to ensure that such use of technologies support the business and do not introduce unintended consequences as a result of poor information management practices.
Collaboration is a business activity that needs to be recorded in context with the broader business process and according to the corporate policies. Records management is the discipline that meets the challenge of capturing and managing all business activities and ensuring that this information is retained for operational and historical purposes. Records management systems enable management of all corporate information assets including content from collaboration tools.
4 -- Consider content sources and types.
Having established that information needs to be managed for its life according to corporate established policies, let’s think about types of content. Organizations need to capture evidence of business events, no matter their source, into logical collections that provide context to the evidential record of their business activities.
Employing this discipline simplifies the management, retention, disposition and discovery of information in its business context. Business records may be created by office productivity tools, be received by email, physical mail, emanate from line of business applications, and of course, collaboration tools. Collaboration environments e.g. in SharePoint add complexity to records management.
5 -- SharePoint collaboration.
Microsoft SharePoint collaboration is being widely adopted and is a prominent example of technology enabling business to be more productive with its use of web 2.0 content types. These new content types of discussions, calendar items, blogs, wikis, and complete sites are also discoverable and must be managed as business records. A blog or wiki could just as easily expose an organization to considerable risk as an email if unmanaged as a business record.
Consider all content types and sources and not just your collaboration environment when choosing your enterprise records management approach to managing corporate content.
6 -- Educate.
Collaborative tools are an enabling technology that used without records management processes and systems in place are little more than a casual unrecorded chat. Education is critical in planning for an information governance environment that supports the needs of the organization. This means education of executive management who will understand governance and risk, technology management and system administrators, and knowledge workers are the powerhouse of the business process. It’s the knowledge worker who uses the tools, and we need to consider the productivity of the knowledge worker.
7 -- Consider the knowledge worker.
It’s the knowledge worker who collaborates, who makes the decision on where to store important information, and who strives to deliver for the business. They are the cog in the wheel without which the desired business outcomes just will not happen. Why do we attempt to overload knowledge worker with the responsibility of deciding what is an important business record? As IM professionals it’s incumbent upon us to enable knowledge and process workers, and at the same time deliver to the corporate objectives of the organization. So consider records management primarily as an administratively established function.
8 -- Records management should be back-end driven.
The last thing we need to do is burden the knowledge worker with administrative tasks. Systems need to be employed that embed the records management rigor into all information management systems. Consider systems that provide knowledge workers with transparent records management with administratively set and systems based processes to ensure relevant business records are managed transparently. This is not a nirvana it can be a reality.
Organizations should consider collaboration in context with all business processes and look for enterprise information governance solutions that have as a fundamental design concept transparency for records management.
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Want to know more?
This essay will be one of the topics we explore at our upcoming seminar series.
Every Spring and Fall, AIIM runs a series of seminars to help end users understand the issues they will encounter in building an information management strategy.
Our theme this Spring -- 8 Ways Your Organization Can Improve Efficiency, Increase Productivity, and Reduce Risk.
Our six cities and dates are as follows.
Attendance is free! Check it out. We'd love to see you there.
- Seattle, March 9 (Tues)
- San Francisco, March 11 (Thurs)
- Anaheim, March 16 (Tues)
- Denver, March 18 (Thurs)
- Dallas, March 23 (Tues)
- Houston, March 25 (Thurs)
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