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the Free CMSWire NewsletterWhile the sight of a business manager bristling with indignation over “inefficiencies” in the enterprise is a common one, and one of the accepted methods of increasing productivity is better business processes, research published by Iron Mountain would seem to suggest that, from an IT perspective, a good deal of the problem lies with institutionalized inertia rather that with particular products or workforce segments.
While that may seem like a sweeping generalization, at least superficially — and, in fact, probably is, if you take it apart — the findings of Iron Mountain’s Managing Information: Trends in Business Process Efficiency would seem to suggest that, while many companies are aware of inefficiencies in business process management, quite a number are not doing a lot about it.
Business Processes, Management
We have seen in some recent Gartner research that one of the key elements involved in the implementation of an effective enterprise collaboration program is direction from management on the goals and expectations from such a program. For the development of an effective information management program, we can probably say the same.
The Iron Mountain findings are the result of research undertaken earlier this year across 5,500 professionals in mid-sized organizations that aimed to identify key business efficiency challenges.
Recurring Themes
And identify them it did. In fact, had we been writing this article three years ago, we might have come up with the same findings. That is to say, while awareness of problems around information management issues may be higher, and the number of companies reacting to these problems is also higher, the problems still appear to be the same, what we might call the “Frustrating Five."
Frustrating, that is, because no matter what progress has been made on the technology side of the equation, these problems seem to persist.
Findings associated with managing both paper and electronic information include:
- 65% of organizations polled admit to having an incomplete or no formal records and information management process.
- 32% of those surveyed report that a trigger event has increased their awareness of the need for improved records and information management.
- 58% of organizations have not yet experienced such a trigger event.
Trigger events include things such as mergers, or in more extreme cases, lawsuits, or even full-blown disasters.
Iron Mountain: How efficient is your business?
The “Frustrating Five”
So what are the “Frustrating Five”? While there are undoubtedly other factors in other IT areas that need careful consideration, in terms of information management, they include:
1. Bottlenecks
Information bottlenecks are still common and result from a lack of consideration of the value of particular information, or content, and its relevancy in the business process.
The research recommends enterprises examine who needs the information, what the information is needed for and whether it is needed in current business processes. Enterprises also need to index all information and develop a means of storing information that is not currently used
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