I recently read an article describing the phenomenon of “Digital Fatigue” that is plaguing organisations. Much of this seems to be concentrated in the concept that organisations in order to be successful must have established ‘Digital Transformation’ strategies. Only when these strategies are implemented, companies can stay competitive and effective in an increasingly dynamic and demanding business environment. This has been especially true within the Digital Records Management space.

For many large organisations, much of the development around digital transformation and indeed much of the angst associated with Digital Fatigue can be in my opinion attributed to the lack of clarity around best practices. Managing large quantities of information and records collected and accumulated over a long period of time become a key focal point.

The response to these challenges has traditionally been to just throw money at the problem and hope for the best - an option that is rarely available for SMEs.

The result has been a fragmented digital solutions’ market that is concerned more about adding more and more features while creating a locked system for their respective products than to identify the true value for their clients and in turn creating better outcomes for themselves.

My proposition is that given these described challenges and pitfalls, there must be a clearly defined best practice to allow organisations - both large and small - the ability to quickly identify and assess any potential records management solution.

These solutions must not only be affordable and effective but have also significant return on investment.  Having the right system will achieve great benefits for their customers down the line. The best practice I will describe in this short article consists of the following (in no particular order):

Varied levels of Business Classification Schemes (BCS)/ Taxonomy setup - Traditionally, within organisations that require a records management solution, it has been the purview of a dedicated records manager(s) to adhere to imposed records structures often defined through government regulation. These structures would then be implemented into a Business Classification Scheme. An issue with many electronic records management systems (EDRMS) is that while a particular solution may comply with regulations, the BCS is not immediately recognisable by end users who most often associate filing documents/records with organisational structures and activities. The result then is a low end user uptake of the solution. The ideal solution therefore is a system that can apply a compliant BCS that has the flexibility for further taxonomy layers to be applied. This will result in higher user up take and lower records management administration – and cost.

Automatic Disposal applications based on defined BCS - Given the large number of records and files that need to be stored in electronic records management systems, electronically stored records should be able to inherit disposal rules, however complex, from a pre-defined Business Classification Scheme. This aims to reduce the administrative overhead of records managers by allowing end users to enter records in a compliant fashion without external intervention. It constantly surprises me that in many legacy EDRMS – while still popular with government departments -  still require each individual record to have a disposal application applied to it – not a very efficient use of time and resources.

Flexible Disposal Trigger Types - Electronically stored records in order to meet both organisational needs and regulatory compliance require flexible disposal trigger types. For example – last modified date, date of last deleted record etc.

Individual documents filed as individual records - While records managers place emphasis on replicating the storage methodology for electronic documents in the same way as paper, end users often do not. A good EDRMS must be able to store each individual document as an individual record. This has the benefit again of reducing the time and effort that records managers would have to take through the creation of separate record containers. Another added benefit is that a document stored as an individual record is then more easily searchable.  Each document is therefore treated as an asset and is of added value to the organisation.

Seamless document/email capture methods - Whether you are capturing documents using an electronic document management system, Microsoft Office macros or scanners, the process should be seamless. This has the immediate benefit of increasing uptake as end users inherently have their own preferred workflows. Flowing from this is again better flexibility and reduced labour costs of records managers. This further reduces the amount of training required and time spent learning the system.

Permanent information that is never lost (content search) - Information is only useful if it can be easily found and accessed. Nowhere is this more relevant than in records management. As a result, a good system makes the entire content of the stored record searchable. Ideally this will occur automatically with all digitally created documents that have content immediately searchable. Yet, this is especially important for scanned documents that require an OCR process for embedded content to be searched. A recent US study found that time spent on looking for documents costs around $US6,000 per month in lost productivity per person. A good records management system makes sure you’re not wasting time looking, rather than doing!

Easy to use UI - If you are spending more time configuring a system than actually using the system then it’s not a great system. Records management configuration has to be as simple as setting up some simple rules through a web-form with an intuitive interface that is laid out logically and is easily accessible if things need to be changed.

Business process integration - If your system doesn’t allow for the facilitation of your business processes through electronic records workflows then you’re not as efficient as you could be. Most importantly, you, the user should be able to create and maintain your own workflows. If you need to call the vendor every time you need a new workflow, you waste time and money. You should not have to keep switching from one platform to another to assign work and maintain a good record trail. A good records management system will follow your records, documents and items in a single repository, but also make it possible for these items to be viewed and modified by authorised people who need them all in the one place.

Reporting that can be done through search interface - A modern EDRMS must allow anyone to conduct a search and from that search be able to run a simple report function. Furthermore, the search needs to be able to be saved and be run again in the future in order to cut down on repetitive tasks. Furthermore, favourite searches need to be saved and “dynamic” search folder need to auto-populate without even conducting a new search.

Discussion function that allows  customers to work collaboratively - Have you ever looked at a document or record and thought – “why has that been done that way?” or “who’s changed this and why?” and then gone through your emails and correspondence to find some semblance of an audit trail? You shouldn’t have to waste time finding out why. Modern systems will provide you with collaboration tools like an information feed that is attached to the record as metadata.  As you can see from the best practice I have stated in this article, many of the things we should have are not difficult. The best practice I have described is what any good solutions vendor has to be implementing in their solution out of the box. The common theme - if you have not already picked it up - is that records management solutions shouldn’t necessarily be about bells and whistles, they should be about: how do we make it easier for our users to provide better services for their customers. Solutions are by definition are the antithesis to a problem – we just need to make sure we are addressing the right problems in the first place. I believe we can start by  implementing best practices as described above.

Venkat Kedharanathan is Principal Consultant with the Australian office of EDRMS vendor ELO. Contact him at info@elodigital.com.au​