Making Resolutions vs. Transforming Business
We all know how difficult it can be to keep your New Year’s resolutions. This is no different for businesses who face the issues of reducing costs, organizing systems, and locating files.
The good news: You do not need resolutions to address these issues. What you need are practical steps to change the life of your business. Leave the past behind and follow the path to transform your organization through data optimization and cost savings.
#1 De-Clutter Your Shared Drive: To turnover this leaf, you need a plan with measurable and attainable goals to be accomplish with realistic timelines.
- Develop clear guidance through policies and procedures to align your shared drive with your business processes and records management policies.
- Classify your files by function. Consistent categorization increases probability of finding files when you need them.
- Lastly, but very importantly, eliminate redundant, outdated, and trivial (ROT) files from your folders. Be rigorous in this effort—do not take ROT files into your new ECM environment.
#2 Select Expert Teams: In the wise words of leadership guru Simon Sinek, “A team is not a group of people that work together. A team is a group of people that trust each other.” You need that team. Assemble subject matter experts (SMEs) who trust each other and have experience in content cleanup and migration.
Your experts will help you determine historical and corporate knowledge to validate the importance of files and documents. SMEs know what information should remain, what should be deleted, and why it’s important. They can also communicate among all users to ensure project and portfolio goals and deadlines remain on-track.
#3 Plan Well, Execute Well: Your information governance (IG) solution is in place, your goals and timelines set, and your team assembled: it’s time to migrate your data. Good migrations begin with great plans and end with disciplined communications and execution. Take time to remind all users of established timelines and keep them informed of any changes.
Make the most of your new ECM environment: Run user acceptance testing to validate migration processes. Again, communication is key, so be sure to inform all participants when and how they can use the ECM to enhance their daily activities.
If you’re ready to eschew yearly resolutions in favor of transformation, FileFacets can help. We’ve teamed with M-Files, which was named a Visionary in the Gartner 2016 Magic Quadrant for ECM for its completeness of vision and ability to execute. M-Files can help organizations — especially organizations that work in highly regulated industries — manage, find, and share digital content.
FileFacets can help you find, shrink, and port your files to the M-Files environment. Our product works as the only ECM enhancement solution available as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), making deployment easy and cost effective.
For more information on how M-Files and FileFacets can help you, please check out a recording of our M-Files webinar here.