denotes premium content | Feb 7 2012 
Enterprise Information archive
Volume 1 Issue 8
Editor's letter
Whether you’re a public-sector organisation that needs to meet the demands of the UK’s Freedom of Information Act, a CFO losing sleep over section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act or a financial institution that needs to comply with Basel II, the underlying message is clear – develop effective and transparent information-management practices or risk the consequences of non-compliance.
An increasingly regulated culture means that the need for effective records management has never been greater. But the records-management function has been traditionally starved of attention and dismissed as simply a back-office function. Record keeping has deteriorated so gradually that it has gone largely unnoticed as a development issue.
This is a view shared by many delegates at Ark Group’s Compliance Connect 2004 event. While many agreed that good records management underpins an organisation’s reputation and results, most approached compliance on a project or department basis, encouraging silo-working practices. Delegates also agreed that disparate legacy IT applications and systems merely reinforce an entrenched silo-working mentality.
Compliance should be an enterprise-wide discipline and should be managed and supported by an owner, with well designed processes and appropriate technology. Like other disciplines, it must be embedded in all processes, otherwise it becomes tempting to bypass it altogether.
Meeting the requirements of compliance regulations and legislation will be the greatest challenge for many sectors in 2005. If organisations are to effectively meet the demands of compliance regulations, a reliable records-management strategy, covering areas such as information audits, policy development, and electronic-document and records management, is key.
I hope you enjoy this month’s issue. As always, if you have any comments, questions or suggestions, please do not hesitate to contact me at jschofield@ark-group.com.
Editor
Jason Schofield
Features
The last word: Cutting out the errors in paperwork
Errors in electronic documents are costing business dearly, but now manufacturers and retailers have got together to try clean up the information that oils the wheels of trade. They have embarked on a massive effort to agree standards that will enable them to exchange data accurately anywhere in the world.
A US industry study carried out by consulting company AT Kearney estimated that $40bn, or 3.5 per cent, of total sales lost each year are due to supply-chain-information inefficiencies. The study showed that 30 per cent of data in retail catalogues contains mistakes, which cost between $60 and $80 each to put right and require 25 minutes of manual cleaning.
Showcase: Stellent
Stellent is a global provider of content-management-software solutions that drive rapid success for customers by enabling fast implementations and generating quick, broad user adoption.
With Stellent, customers can easily deploy multiple line-of-business applications – such as websites, call centres, dealer extranets, compliance initiatives, accounts payable imaging and claims processing – and also scale the technology to support enterprise-wide content management needs.
Serving the information needs of CF families
When the Directorate of Military Family Services (DMFS) wanted to enhance service delivery to Canadian Forces (CF) families stationed out-of-country, it knew it was embarking on a mission like no other.
A process-centric portal
Winner of the ‘Best intranet’ category at the 2004 Information Management Awards in London, UK, real-estate giant British Land has successfully re-engineered its business processes into a portal environment
Historically, British Land used paper-based forms to communicate with business partners and track the progress of transactions and operations. However, by 2000 the continued use of paper to control such a key part of the company’s business was presenting a number of challenges.
Managing change for the better
The role of technology in KM is a contentious subject, but intranet development can promote a knowledge-sharing culture if approached with the user in mind.
Nomen est omen, the Romans used to say: your name contains a clue to your destiny, and this sentiment applies to many intra-organisational projects today. Give a project the wrong name and it is doomed to fail, either because it fails to catch the imagination of your colleagues and is dismissed as ‘fluff’, or because it doesn’t fit conveniently into any existing organisational box.
Cover story: Intelligent decision making
Business intelligence is storming up the corporate agenda and becoming an important component of IT budgets. But BI projects must be aligned with the strategic objectives of the organisation. Failing this, companies will reap only a fraction of the benefits of their BI deployments. By Tracey Caldwell.
Regulars
A fistful of content: intranet content governance and ownership
Effective content governance is one of the biggest challenges to achieving intranet success, with the need to resolve myriad ownership issues driving demand for a defined governance model.
Many years ago, at the dawn of the intranet era, content management was the Wild West of the corporate world. The sheer expanse of the unexplored territories offered limitless possibilities, and content pioneers flocked in search of their own stake in the intranet. With promises of gold, fortune and adventure, how could they deny the call of the wild?
The big blog debate
Recent coverage of weblogs, more commonly known as blogs, has highlighted both the opportunities and the potential dangers the medium presents. There is no getting away from the rapid increase in interest blogging is generating among knowledge-focused professionals, however, and more organisations seem ready to take a leap of faith and incorporate blogs in their KM toolkit. By Jessica Twentyman.
Metadata: a writing skill, not just part of the code
As the kids of today become the adults of tomorrow, they will take many things for granted that my generation marvelled at, such as mobile phones, MP3 players and iPods. But there are skill sets associated with these devices that kids may take for granted that are not so obvious and are something from which we could learn a lot and apply to our own online environments.
7ce7K46X… or is it 7ce7K56X?
What had been a minor inconvenience suddenly became a real problem during the recent half-term school break. My family had just finished a meal at an Italian restaurant. As normal, I produced my Visa card, and waited to provide the left-handed scrawl that passes for my signature. But instead the waiter brought back a new PIN machine, and cheerily asked for my four-digit number. Somewhere in the dull recesses of my mind, I remembered that Visa had recently provided me with yet another electronic password to add to my collection. But could I remember it now? Could I hell. Luckily, albeit to the slight disappointment of my children, I was able to provide the number for my Switch card instead, and embarrassment was averted. But it had been a close call.
