A 5-step strategy for harnessing global information growth.

• Author: Nowak, Brian
• Position: RIM FUNDAMENTALS

Our global records management and compliance department faced a huge challenge: handling the explosive growth in information being received from businesses located around the world--the result of both organic and inorganic growth due to the acquisition of a complementary financial entity. We realized the company needed a global approach to records management; playing its traditional role, our records management team simply could not support the needs of our growing global company.

In transforming our team from that traditional to a more strategic role, we established objectives, took actions, and learned lessons that should be of value to other organizations struggling to harness the ever-widening pools of information they must manage efficiently in their daily course of business.

Program Assessment

First, we took a critical look at our current processes and the future of information management. We found that our global records management team was primarily focused on the transactional elements of records management, such as preparing items for offsite storage, reacting to internal business units' needs, and responding to crisis requests.

These were all complicated by the wide variation in the level of records management sophistication among lines of business and locations in various countries, and dealing with these tasks left very little time to prepare for exponential information growth or to coordinate our efforts globally. We determined that to provide much greater value to the company, we needed to shift our records management team's focus from transactional to the strategic components of information management.

Strategic Objectives

We focused on five strategic actions to harness, use, and control information:

1. Consolidating retention schedules throughout our worldwide operations

2. Establishing processes and methods for universal information subject categorization and indexing

3. Aligning access to and management of both paper-based and electronic information

4. Creating processes to continuously solicit stakeholder feedback regarding information management, including from within the institution, operational lines of business, regions and country management, legal, audit, and other corporate functions

5. Establishing a truly global information management strategy

   Action Steps

   Because of our growth, there was a widespread realization that we needed a more comprehensive way to manage information, and our internal environment was primed for change. That made it easier to "sell" the need to...