We’ve moved!
Have you missed reading Jeffrey Cox’s blog every month? Well, good news! It’s not gone, it’s only moved.
Check it out: http://www.improvegroup.net/blog_Jeffrey
Working With I.T.
I recently had the honor to give the first presentation of the year to the Rio Grande Chapter of ARMA International. The presentation was called “Speaking I.T.,” based on our chapter laying out the presentations for the year at the summer planning session. Between summer and fall I had a lot of time to think about this presentation and came up with some deep revelations about “Information Technology Departments” that I was excited to share with them and now you.
A LinkedIn discussion I started:
http://linkd.in/qvTXlj really helped bring all my thoughts together and produce a real “ah ha!” moment. I.T. focuses on “technology,” and not the “information.” If you can keep this in mind, realize their paradigm, and then fit in by being the “information” resource, you can really boost your relationship with this sometimes awkward department.
I.T.’s primary mission is “technology.” They have to provide and maintain the tools that an organization uses to make information malleable. They have to provide desktop tools, the servers, the storage and the connectivity. This is a challenge in itself; then, throw on top of that the challenges they are facing in the world of today – mobile computing, virtual computing and now the cloud. Ask I.T., on top of all of this, to look at business and information processes – as well as policies – and you will see a lock up harder than a computer running the first version of Windows. This is where RIMs can come in and help.
RIM professionals focus on the information, the processes and policies. My recommendation for building the relationship is to offer to be a help to I.T. when these types of projects come up. If you can be there to take this load off of them, you may very well end up being their hero and make for a great win / win situation. This can be a critical help if the “project” involves an emergency such as a lawsuit, or, in the unfortunate times of a disaster. Even on the lighter side of things, there will come a time when I.T. will start struggling with the challenge of too much information. Yes, I.T. has leaned a lot on the decrease in cost over years for the physical technology. However, the cost – as we RIM professionals know – for managing that increased information only goes up. This will show up on P&L Statements and I.T. will have to respond. Bringing in your RIM’s knowledge will save the day and build that relationship.
I.T. people are a funny breed. (I can say this; I am one.) We love technology, and letting us tell you about it will really turn us from “deer in the headlights” to “a proud stag.” Promise: it will lighten up the mood in any meeting, allowing for progress on your needs to be had. “Paradigm is everything,” is one of my favorite sayings – and it certainly will be your aide in working with I.T. to get what you need accomplished done.
Have questions about working with I.T.? Post them here!
Jeffrey Cox is available to speak at your ARMA, RIM or AIIA conferences. For more information contact him here: http://www.improvegroup.net/contact.
Facing SharePoint?
I bet you are either in the thick of it, or you hear about it at least once a month, or maybe you are being forced into it by your Information Technology department, or your users are saying, “hey, we really need to be using it.” That “it” is SharePoint as a records management system. Did you just cringe? Did the hair on the back of your neck stand up? Yeah, I am right there with you. This is a big challenge, especially when it comes to records management as there is a lot to consider:
- Paper Records? No – SharePoint, out of the box*, has no way to manage your physical files.
- Electronic Records? Yes (But Collaboration Only) – SharePoint at its core is a collaboration system. It has great tools (key point here, more on that in a second) to allow users to share and collaborate on electronic documents. But, out of the box, it has no way to perform records management on these if your organization considers them official records.
- Retention? No – SharePoint can categorize things, and put a “destroy” date on a category. However, that’s the end of retention in SharePoint. You cannot, for example, put a legal hold on a record series.
- Toolkit? Yes – You have to think of SharePoint as a big toolkit. You have to open the bag and have the skills to take the tools out, put them together and create the system you want.
It is this last point that is the big kicker. If you want to use SharePoint as a records management system with full retention and check out/check in of records, you have two choices. One is to “build,” in which your I.T. department has to assign programmers and basically build a system from scratch. There is a huge cost associated with this in both time and money – and there is no certainty in succeeding.
We have a state government agency as a client where the Records Manager knew they were in desperate need of a records management system. We had a couple of options for them that would have completely fit the bill. However, their I.T. department stepped in and said, “We are a SharePoint shop – you have to use that, and we will build it for you.” I even met with the I.T. department and asked them how they would do things like overdue notifications, custodial history and legal holds. “Fred will build it,” is what they said. That was two years ago. To this day, the records manager still doesn’t have the tools she needs to effectively do her job.
Your other choice is to “buy,” where you buy add-ons to make SharePoint do what you need it to do. There are some good add-ons for SharePoint, choosing carefully and having expertise there to help will make sure your ultimate goal, good records management, is accomplished.
* Partnering with a Storage & Access Expert can help. We have solutions that can add Paper Recordkeeping to SharePoint, as well as other services to make sure your records management goals are met.
Conquering the Information Explosion – Tip 4 – Are you delivering information as effectively as you can?
I like to think of myself as an “Arm Chair Economist.” When I get together with friends or fellow Problem Solvers, I like to point out the many paradoxes of our current economy. Now, I won’t get on that soap box here (this is an information and records management blog for heaven’s sake)! Yet our “New Economy,” as I like to call it, is certainly throwing challenges at us. I see clients every day who are having to do more with less. Your competition* is having to do the same, and find ways to do “it” better than you. One of those “its” is serving your customers.
I know that when I am in the customer’s shoes, I expect organizations to be able to give me the information I am asking for quickly. If I hear an answer like, “well, we will have to find that and it might take a day or two” or “it will take a couple of days to process this,” I start considering looking for another organization. Ray Kroc looked to process and technology to assure that, even today, you get the same Big Mac as quickly as possible. You need to do the same to make sure you survive the information explosion.
Today, your customers are going to expect you to deliver information with that same Big Mac speed. You need to:
- Ø Look at Your Processes
- o Have you visited your processes lately? Are they as efficient as they can be?Are they based on old paradigms that need to change?
- Ø Look at Policies – Internal and External
- o Are there policies that affect all of this? Did a policy go away (like an approval point) that could be removed from the process to speed things up.
- Ø Look at Technology
- o As I’ve talked about before, technology is leaps and bounds better than it was just a few years ago. Back then, your Information Technology department may have had to run reports in “batches” at night as they just didn’t have the processing power on their servers. That is not the case today (don’t let them tell you it is)!
Every day, we help clients with issues just like these and help them grow and succeed in the new economy. You too can take on this challenge and succeed – you just have to “do it!”
* Even if you are a government organization, you have “competition.” You might be a county clerk, for example. If you are not getting records requests fulfilled fast enough, your challenger in the next election is your competition.
How to Fit Your Building in Your Pocket
I am going to take time out from my “Conquering Tips” to share with you something that really struck me recently. This is something that, on the one hand, records and information managers might say, “well, yeah, I know that is coming, but I don’t have to worry about that in my near future.” On the other hand, I will show that this is
a problem (challenge? opportunity?) that you will be facing a lot sooner than
you might think.
In my Information Explosion talk, I show a video. And in this video there is this quote from Ray Kurzweil, an American author, inventor and futurist:
“So what used to fit in a building now fits in your pocket, what fits in your pocket now, will fit inside a blood cell in 25 years.”
– Ray Kurzweil
At a high level, I believed this. (One would hope so if I include it in my presentation!) I backed this up in my presentation by talking about the second computer I worked on in my life. I actually do not mention the first one, a
Commodore 64. This computer would store data on cassette tapes. You were lucky
to get maybe five pages of text on a tape. The second computer I worked on was an Apple IIe. The Apple used 5 1/4″ floppy disks. Each one of these disks would hold 62 pages of text. Today, the laptop I am writing this article on can hold over 168,000,000 pages of text. So, on a shear information scale, claims like
Ray’s seem probable. But, at the “size” scale, I always said “not in my near future.”
The physical size of my laptop vs. a floppy disk doesn’t let the brain compute that. Then, I read something that really brought the blood cell home to me.
Intel recently announced that they have developed a new technology. This new technology lets them make transistors, the parts inside a computer chip, four times smaller than what was possible only eight years ago. How small? 22 nanometers (or nm for short)! How small is 22 nanometers?
- A human hair is 60,000nm.
- A red blood cell is 7,500nm in width.
- In 2003, Intel was making transistors as small as 90nm.
- Today, they are 32nm.
- A strand of DNA is 2.5nm
What this does for Intel is: they can make a computer chip that is faster, takes less space and requires less power – in other words, a more powerful chip. More powerful chips mean more storage. Suddenly, “what used to fit in {your} building now will fit inside a blood cell” doesn’t seem that far off.
Are you ready for and planning for this? You should be. And, fortunately, there is help.
Having good records management procedures and policies in place will help, and ARMA is there with resources to do that. Having good partners like the company I work for, Improve Group, to help you weigh this, compared to key factors that are critical to your organization, compared to making sure you are using the right hardware and software, is critical.
Just like I tell people at the end of my talk, you can be ready for this – you just have to take action now. Doing so will take a problem and turn it into an opportunity for you and your organization.
If you are interested in reading more about Intel’s announcement, check out this article in the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/05/science/05chip.html?_r=1
As well as this PDF at Intel’s website:
http://download.intel.com/newsroom/kits/research/2011/pdfs/22nm_Discussion.pdf
Conquering the Information Explosion – Tip 3 – Using the Right Tools
As you may have heard me talk about at ARMA Chapter meetings, using the right tools is critical in successfully conquering the information explosion. Fortunately, technology has become so much better in the past few years that the right tools are ready and waiting for you, some even for free. When I started with technology, my Apple IIe had 5 ¼ inch floppy disks that could hold maybe 60 pages of text. Today, I travel with a laptop that can hold over 160 million pages of text! What an incredible example of how technology has progressed on the storage side of things. (Side Note: Your I.T. (Information Technology) department will be very tempted to “just buy you more storage” to deal with your growing information volume and recommend you just “keep it all” because you can. That’s a bad idea, as many records managers will tell you, and something I will talk about in a future blog post.)
Database technology has followed right along with this trend. Database technology is amazing as it has become faster, yet, can store and access data much faster. Microsoft’s SQL Server is an amazing database tool that gets better and better with age. And, if you have a small department with a data need, you can use SQL Server for free! Also, SQL Server isn’t the only game in town. MySQL, mainly used for web applications, is continuing to improve and be a viable option for business and business records. Again, this is a free tool your organization can consider using to provide better ways to store information.
On the access side of things, technology also has tools that will really help you out. Today, there is no reason why an information worker can’t work with the information when and where they need to. Technology is rapidly becoming very adaptive. One example is this blog. If you are looking at it on your PC, it’s formatted for your PC. But, if you view it on a mobile device, it automatically reformats for that device so that device is a very effective access tool. Your business information systems must do the same thing so information workers can be successful. If they don’t, well, you need to contact someone like us! 
http://www.improvegroup.net/contact
Question: Look at the tools your organization is using. Are your tools letting your information workers, and your organization, be as successful and effective as they could be?
Conquering the Information Explosion – Tip 2 – Data Already In
Now that you have looked at the data coming into your organization, it is now time to look at the information that is both already in your organization, and the information that you have determined has to come into your organization.
One of the first things I look at when I work with clients is how effectively they are using their information. Specifically, I am interested in how long it takes information to go from “Point A” to “Point B” to “Point C,” etc. The more efficient an organization is with this workflow, the better prepared they will be for growth of their information, as well as just being better prepared to be more successful in general.
At the Improve Group website, we have a video profile on one client where we did just that – and we helped their organization grow almost ten-fold. http://www.improvegroup.net/markets/profile/all/National_Travel_Systems
Action Item: Take an inventory of the information already inside your organization. Does it flow effectively from one workflow stage to the next?
Helpful Link: “LEAN” is a process that has been used in manufacturing for many years to help make the manufacturing process more effective. Now, there are books like this one that can help bring this same technique to your records and information. http://amzn.to/mlE4t4
Going Paperless to Conquer the Information Explosion
McDonald’s may want and appreciate volume when it comes to their hamburgers; but when it comes to the information coming into your organization, volume can be a problem. In my last post, I talked about conquering the information explosion by looking at the data coming in. I wanted to take a minute and share a real world experience I recently had that shows this in a different light.
I have been working with a large law firm. They asked Improve Group to come in and help them conquer the information explosion they are dealing with. After spending some time with them, the avalanche they were facing became very clear. Every day, they receive over 2,500 pages of paper based information in the form of mail, faxes and emails. Daily. Without fail. Most of the time, the volume is even higher than this. This organization is drowning in paper information. So, we took a new twist on Tip 1, “look at the data coming into your organization.” They have to bring in this data; it is core to their business so there is no “stopping it.” However, instead of keeping all this information in paper form and trying to move it around within the organization as well as store it, what if we came up with a better way to store and access it?
So, that’s exactly what we are doing. The paperless office is becoming more and more of a reality every day, and for this customer, I know we are going to achieve it. We will eliminate their McDonald’s super-sized headache, and in doing so, make them more effective and efficient.
Action Item: If you haven’t taken the inventory recommended last time, do it! Then, don’t just look at if you need this information, but are you storing it and accessing it as effectively as you can?
Upcoming Presentations
April 13 – Information Explosion
At the Northern New Mexico Chapter (Santa Fe Area) – ARMA International Spring Seminar
New Mexico State Records Center and Archives/New Mexico State Library
1205 Camino Carlos Rey
Santa Fe, NM 87507
https://sites.google.com/site/nnmarma/
April 14 – Information Explosion
At the DigIn II – Digital Information Conference, University of New Mexico Continuing Education Center, Albuquerque, NM
April 19 – eDiscovery & RIM: Holds, Hearings & Depositions
The Mile High Denver Chapter is having its Annual Spring Seminar at The Summit Event Center in Aurora, CO
Conquering the Information Explosion – Tip 1 – Data In
Recently, the information I use as a basis for my Information Explosion mantra hit the pages of Science Magazine and the Wall Street Journal. In the Wall Street Journal article, they reiterate the data I use – that we as a society can and have produced 295 exabytes of information – which is 295 billion gigabytes. They take a slightly different slant at things, though, in that they say this is nothing to worry about. They suggest that much of this is because of high resolution videos and photos, and not necessarily “information.” They also make an argument asking the question of, “does each byte of information really signify ‘information?’” I was pleased to see Mr. Bialik state, “Studies looking at the information glut do generally agree that there has been an enormous upsurge in information.” I personally see organizations struggling with this every day, just as I bet you do.
Evidence points to organizations struggling with information overload. In December, Bloomberg News reported that, “companies are coming up against limits on how much more efficiency they can wring from current staff to meet rising sales.” Organizations of all sizes and types are challenged with information overloads caused by trigger events such as these. However, as I talk about in my Information Explosion presentation, there are ways to take these problems and turn them into opportunities.
The first thing I coach my clients to do is to look at the data coming into your organization. Take an inventory of what is coming into your organization (paper, electronic, phone calls, etc.). Take a serious look at this inventory and decide if you really need all this information. Many times, when I am working with clients, they find that the practice of bringing this information into the organization is out dated; it is left over from an old practice of many years ago and, actually, the information is no longer needed. Just as in records management, once we have an inventory and know what we have, we can start weeding out what we do not need and start dealing with what we do need – conquering the explosion.
Action Item: Take an inventory of all the inbound information coming into your organization. Decide if you really need this information or if it is left over from old practices.
Upcoming Presentations
April 13 – Information Explosion
At the Northern New Mexico Chapter (Santa Fe Area) – ARMA International Spring Seminar
New Mexico State Records Center and Archives/New Mexico State Library
1205 Camino Carlos Rey
Santa Fe, NM 87507
https://sites.google.com/site/nnmarma/
April 14 – Information Explosion
At the DigIn II – Digital Information Conference, University of New Mexico Continuing Education Center, Albuquerque, NM
(Keep an eye on these two sites; information will be posted soon.)
Evil Spreadsheets
Now this is a subject I have wanted to write about for a long time, but today’s experience was “the straw” that finally got me to do it.
Spreadsheets are an amazing tool. I personally started using VisiCalc from VisiCorp back in 1983. VisiCalc was the world’s first spreadsheet and was amazing! It was basically a quick and easy way to start a mini-database. You could do sorts and formulas for calculations quickly and easily. Entering data was easy; as you could enter anything. Copying data was even easier. Today, Microsoft Excel is, of course, far superior and even easier to use. Yet, all of this “easy” can get you in trouble pretty darn quick.
I work with customers every day who see the same promises. One can quickly and easily start creating a database of information without any programming or support from the Information Technology department. Yet, as the amount of data grows, they quickly start running into some treacherous roadblocks. Below are my top reasons why I highly recommend against using spreadsheets for managing records and information:
1) Data Consistency – Spreadsheets, short of adding complicated programming or coding to them, have no mechanisms for assuring the integrity of your data. Today, I was working with a client who we recently installed a Records Management System for. In the past, they managed all their records in spreadsheets. However, we have run into several issues of data integrity they were unaware of. In today’s example, we found that even though they thought all users were entering data consistently, they were not (as shown). 
This particular example makes it where automated retention calculations will not be so automated – unless a lot of extra programming is put into the one spreadsheet and copied over to the many others they are using to assure data is checked.
2) Multi-User – Speaking of the “many others,” spreadsheets do not allow for simultaneous multi-user access. Many times, users are forced to create copies of the spreadsheets for other users to use. Later, organizations have to hope (for lack of better words) that someone merges all the information back together. I suspect you know the success rate of this hoping.
3) Data Integrity – Spreadsheets purposely do not check the type of information you are entering – again in an effort to make life “easier.” You might plan for a numeric job number, for example, but then get tempted by this lack of enforcement to start entering alpha characters in the job number. Down the road, people wonder why things do not work like the sorting of data, or, why searches do not turn up the data they are looking for.
4) Data Protection – the spreadsheet also does not care or guard against someone highlighting a bunch of data and accidentally, or purposely, deleting it – putting critical and valuable information at risk.
So, what do you do?
1) Spring for the Database – Yes, a database requires setup – defining your tables, the field names and data types. However, don’t you want to think through your data anyway and assure data integrity? Isn’t your data important enough to take this time and effort?
Many people have Microsoft Access, which, especially with the Office 2010 version, is a powerful tool.
If you want amazingly reliable data integrity and multi-user ability, then go for Microsoft SQL Server. You can download a free version from Microsoft which is more than sufficient for many business needs.
2) Upgrade into a Records Management System – a records management system will do everything the database system above will do, but adds two additional, and critical, components to the mix:
- Data Protection – A good Records Management System has security and safeguards to assure that data is not deleted. Or, if it is deleted by an authorized user that an audit trail captures this deletion.
- Retention – There certainly is a time when data should “go away.” Spreadsheets and databases by themselves will not implement retention without a lot of complicated programming. The Records Management System has invented this wheel for you – and does a great job.
Doing a great job is ultimately what you want to do. Doing so requires the right tools. Make sure you have such and, if not, make sure you hire an expert that will make sure you do.
Visit our website at: www.improvegroup.net for more information.
Where I Work
I am a Problem Solver for Improve Group. We help improve organizations of all types and sizes with their Storage & Access needs, from physical records to electronic data to physical assets like weapons, property & evidence and surgical supplies.