Information management in today business environment
Managing information is a complex and ongoing issue*ƒ²*ƒ”€šand it vital to your
business. Not only do you need to make sure that data is available to the right people at the
right time, competitive pressures demand that data be leveraged to help you identify
trends, respond more quickly to customers and to optimise day-to-day operations wherever
information is used within your business.
Customer expectations are very high and grow higher with each interaction, so you must
continue to improve the customer experience by making historical and transactional
information readily accessible to your sales, service and marketing teams. Critical business
information is needed at the CEO fingertips at all times to help make more informed
business decisions.
Beyond day-to-day operations, today business environment is one of increasing regulations
as well as more stringent internal corporate governance. Under these regulations and
policies, information must be accessible and secure, and stored for long periods of
time*ƒ²*ƒ”€šfor decades in some cases.
It is becoming increasingly important to capitalise on business
information*ƒ²*ƒ”€štransforming data into relevant, accessible information that creates
business value. You must also find ways to sustain compliance and support governance
mandates while controlling costs.
Why Records Management is Important
Documents are the by-product of captured business transactions and describe how
organisations process and record their daily activities. Records are the official version of
those business documents and become corporate assets used to document actions,
decisions, and outcomes . Official document versions are records that must meet legal and
regulatory laws as well as corporate operational obligations.
Today businesses are creating and receiving records at an astonishing rate. The volume of
records is not only staggering but the records also come in a variety of formats such as :
” word processing documents
” emails
” faxes
” instant messaging
” text messaging
“¾ digital images *ƒ²*ƒ”€š scanned paper documents
” new media types such as blogs and wikis
” and these documents may reside on a variety of media:
” personal hard drives
” network drives
” backup tapes
” CDs and DVDs
” flash drives
…and some documents may also be created and reside temporarily on remotely attached
devices like personal digital assistants (PDAs) or memory sticks.
Given the volumes of documents, combined with the diverse number of formats,
companies are finding it nearly impossible to effectively manage their documents and
records without an electronic records management system.
Storage
Data growth continues to accelerate beyond levels that can be easily managed *ƒ²*ƒ”€š
indeed, the overall quantity of data stored in electronic format is estimated to be doubling
