As buyers of so called “end-to-end” or “unified” information management (IM) solutions have found out, no single answer to the growing problem of data management exists, particularly when it comes to unstructured data. One need only look at the M&A activity of the largest players in the space (see Information Management meets Compliance) to understand that holistic unstructured data management (UDM) encompasses more than just email archiving, content or records management and storage systems.
At the July 28 Peer Incite research meeting we received confirmation from four practitioners, working in three highly regulated industries; Energy, Finance and Healthcare of the fact that defining IM business processes and technology integration are their biggest IM challenges.
The vast majority of IM implementations are “reactive”. The most common scenarios include the high cost of managing (including conversion from paper to electronic) or storing unstructured data, running out of floor space or power in the data center, reacting to impending litigation activities or mitigation of compliance and regulatory risk. One practitioner described this process as “bringing in a tool to solve a problem before you have truly defined the problem.” This problem definition process starts with articulating the policies, procedures and workflow around managing unstructured data types including emails and other forms of messaging, documents, images, web content and their associated metadata.
This reactive mode is fueled by technology vendors – aided and abetted by short-sighted service providers, regulators and buyers – who promise relief from costly litigation, data center sprawl and the inability to “discover” data assets and liabilities. In reality, there are no holistic end-to-end IM solutions to solve the UDM problem, only a collection of point solutions that either the customer or solutions provider has to integrate. And if you believe, as our panelists and nearly all the industry pundits do, that we are only seeing the tip of the UDM iceberg as unstructured electronically stored information (U-ESI) growth has truly reached exponential proportions, the problem only gets more complex
Therefore, the following steps are highly recommended before implementing any departmental or enterprise wide IM technology solution:
- Create an IM office chaired by a chief information management officer-like (CIMO) individual who has responsibility for the firm's overall IM vision and strategy. This group should have senior level departmental representation from audit, compliance, finance, IT, legal, operations, records management, and security.
- Develop your strategic IM plan to include high impact areas such as lowering costs and risks in eDiscovery, content management, knowledge and data mining, and IM infrastructure areas as well as looking for potential synergies with other departments or workflows to improve return on investment (ROI).
- Create polices that are reasonable and enforceable, and implement ongoing end-user training that emphasizes their responsibility as employees for the creation and disposition of content and the implementation of best practices.
- Map and document major procedures and processes to enhance both the employees and service providers’ view of your workflow. Many solutions fail at this stage when customers don’t take the time to understand what their goals and workflows are prior to implementation. It’s not always the vendor’s fault.
Once these steps are taken and potential high ROI impact areas are identified:
- Create your ROI and total cost of ownership (TCO) scenarios. Our panel strongly recommends using outside consultants to provide objective input free, hopefully, of political baggage or product bias to develop your unique IM profile.
- Develop your RFIs, RFQs, RFPs with specific business goals in mind. Remain cognizant that a piece-meal approach is necessary rather than a “boiling the ocean approach” However, look for solutions that have potential synergies from both a multi-departmental or enterprise perspective or a functionality perspective.
If you choose to get help from vendors in the RFP process, don’t rely on just one or two as, our panel points out, vendors tend to be less strategic in their thinking and, naturally, more focused on selling existing products.
Attributes to look for specific to Information Management solutions include:
- Interoperability or “openness” with your existing infrastructure - regardless of whether or not you choose an in-house, hosted or hybrid solution.
- A policy engine flexible enough to work with existing applications or enhance their functionality;
- Service based architecture that enables information sharing, and an ILM end-to-end view, personalized for many constituents across the enterprise;
- High performance, scalability and recoverability;
- Security, privacy, and authentication capabilities;
- Discoverability – ease and speed of searching, indexing and classifying data;
- Ease of Data Movement.
While this is by no means a comprehensive list of to-dos or in-depth descriptions of functionality sets, it is nevertheless the rule that most companies do not plan properly or anticipate fully the impact of unstructured data on their business or technology infrastructure.
Action Item: Each enterprise needs a proactive integration approach comprised of a phased delivery of IT assets based on a well-thought-out, strategic, business-driven plan, informed by the realization that certain functions or capabilities will have to be added at later dates and that no single vendor is able to solve the entire information management or unstructured data management problem. IM executives responsible for their company’s overall data management strategy need to train their colleagues and focus on departmental or application integration opportunities to leverage existing IM assets such as archiving and ECM implementations where policies, procedures, processes or application functionality may intersect.
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