When it comes to making decisions on moving to an electronic content management system in your business, who is the person most responsible for making that decision?
In the Records Management Report from AIIM last year, I found a very interesting chart.
Let me ask this... Why would the records of a business be an IT decision? What does IT have to do with records management?
I know that the philosophy is that if we are going to put anything on the network, IT needs to be involved. But, does IT really understand the business problem well enough to simply throw technology at it and hope the business problem goes away? I bet there are many out there who do. I bet there are even more out there that don't.
I am an IT guy... I have an IT degree. My brother is an IT guy... significantly better at it than I am. I know how we think. But I am also a businessman... I have a business degree, too.
My opinion is that most people who make business decisions don't look at the IT impact and most people that make IT decisions don't take into consideration the business impact."
Records Management should be a business and legal decision, but IT should be a strong influencer. My bet is that most companies that are considering an electronic content or document management solution are looking to IT to figure it out. Let's make it a business decision so that we can ensure we address the business problems that slow us down.
Compliance and the need to improve efficiency and productivity are the main reasons that people make a move to an electronic document management system. Those are two business problems... let's attack it from that angle to ensure that we address the issues appropriately.
