Preparing for tomorrow with strategic enterprise services today: one Fortune 100 corporation decided to employ strategic enterprise services to better manage the retention, disposition, and access to business records and operational data.

• Author: Lazzara, Allen
• Position: Lessons Learned

Most corporations are inundated with digital data generated by business applications, desktops, laptops, handhelds, partners, the Internet, e-mail, and other sources. Whether it is high-volume business transactions (accounts payable and receivable, checks, statements, reports), documents, spreadsheets, e-mail, forecasting models, images, web pages, XML from the web and corporate intranet, or legacy system transactions, most of this data is not carefully named, categorized, or intelligently managed. It resides on multiple systems, databases, and media and, after its creation and initial use, it is not always known where it resides, who owns it, what it is worth, or even when it was created. All these factors make it difficult to understand the data and whether it represents "an official business record" that must be preserved for regulatory purposes.

A non-proactive approach to managing data results in many pitfalls. After initial creation, business records and operational data are exceedingly difficult to find and use, for instance, to substantiate the data and documentation for a warranty matter addressed many years later. The inability to find needed data easily is also costly. Maintaining ever-increasing volumes of data bears a high price, especially in administrative costs. This all happens in the mist of technology refresh cycles that are causing systems and media to become obsolete rapidly, resulting in needed data residing on media, backup tapes, or technologies that are no longer accessible. Unfortunately, many corporations continue to apply recordkeeping practices based on traditional paper records, neglecting the criticality and complexity of intelligent digital information management.

Progressive organizations are addressing these issues through a comprehensive program for records and information management (RIM). They have realized that today's business is mostly digital and tomorrow's may be all digital. Their business users must be supported, and both records and non-records must be accessible. Business records must be preserved for legally specified durations, and production data (non-records) used to run the business must be intelligently retained and disposed of when no longer needed.

Intelligent Information Management: The Business Imperative

One such progressive company, a U.S.-based Fortune 100 manufacturing and distribution company, relied on paper-based records management practices --until a forward-thinking leader from the technology organization convinced executive business management that the company could not continue to be an industry leader if it did not excel in all aspects of electronic records and information management. In this company's case, enterprise systems were in place to run the business, but no data was ever archived or destroyed. A "full system backup" mentality was in place, and the strategy was to add hardware and storage.

This approach was bleeding the IT budget and running counter to critical tenets of business strategy: operational excellence, cost reduction, and cost-effective regulatory and legal compliance. The company's executives realized they could...