Making a business case for the principles.

• Author: Gable, Julie
• Position: THE PRINCIPLES - Statistical table

The purpose of developing a business case is to outline the difficulties of a current situation, tell how these will be overcome if certain actions are taken, and illustrate how the future will be better because of a commitment of resources in the present. An important part of the business case is the justification for expending resources, usually showing an expected return on investment (ROI) over a given time period, such as three to five years.

Most records and information management (RIM) professionals are adept at describing the difficulties caused by unmanaged and ungoverned information, as well as the actions that need to be taken to resolve the difficulties and how implementing an information governance (IG) program will benefit the organization. The piece of the business case that may be difficult for them is justifying the resource investment and quantifying the ROI.

The Principles, IGMM as Basis for IG

Integrating the use of the Generally Accepted Recordkeeping Principles[R] (Principles) and the Information Governance Maturity Model (IGMM) into specific information-related efforts can be done on an ad hoc basis with little financial expenditure since both are available for free from the ARMA website (www.arma.org/principles). The Principles Series of articles presented in each issue of Information Management magazine over the past four years provides a wide variety of guidance about how that can be done.

The Principles and the IGMM are methodologies based on international standards and broadly accepted best practices, providing a unified underpinning and common understanding of what things need to be done and how. Standardized methods like these point the way forward; they don't usually require an elaborate business case.

While there are optional RIM and IG resources an organization may wish to invest in, such as the Next Level assessment tool and the Information Governance Professional (IGP) and Certified Records Manager (CRM) certifications for staff, the costs for these are generally within the range of departmental budgets and hardly require cost justification measures. However, using the Principles to develop and implement an IG program across the enterprise will call for a business case to be presented, as this will require collaboration among RIM, IT, legal, and business units; involve a contribution of brain power from levels above, below, and including middle management; and demand executive endorsement.

One of the strongest arguments for the Principles is that they underpin and contribute to other efforts that are designed to deliver tangible and intangible results. Nowhere is this more evident than in IG, where the Principles provide the unifying thread in what may look like piecemeal projects proposed from narrow viewpoints.

Because the Principles are the foundation of IG, implementing them is closely interwoven with business cases for IG. In turn, IG's justification is based on risk reduction, cost reduction, or increased productivity. More recently, business cases based on asset value are emerging as well.

IG: Risk Reduction

The perceived importance of IG varies from one organization to another. IG has greater weight where external challenges such as liability lawsuits and regulatory examinations have a high probability of occurring and can have...