2016 The Year of Innovation and Transformation

Published On January 05, 2016

Information Management trends to come in 2016.

I kicked off 2016 seeing the smash hit Broadway musical “Hamilton”, an inspirational production about a brilliant human being, his fellow revolutionaries and founding fathers, and the women who supported him. The show breathes life into dusty history book personages through innovative use of rap, hip hop, and rhythm and blues numbers, that truly take the audience’s breath away.

And that’s what our employers are asking us to do in 2016; Take their breath away by being innovative and transformative, both as individuals and as a professional community of practice. This is substantiated by recent research conducted for Iron Mountain by AIIM. It tells us in no uncertain terms that senior leaders expect us to approach how we accomplish our work – and how we service our internal and external customers – with fresh eyes and the passion of a revolutionary patriot.

So what can we do in 2016 to innovate and transform ourselves? While we aren’t starting with a blank slate, like Hamilton, we need to expand on, modify, and in some instances add new skills and capabilities to our repertoire, particularly in the following areas:

Data analytics: millions of dollars are being spent on the analysis of information to derive benefits for organizations including improvements to customer experience, new product development, increased work flow productivity, and more. As a RIM professional, you need to be involved in this movement by helping to identify where relevant data can be found, providing insight into accuracy, consulting on concerns about access related to private or privileged information, and more. Rather than dueling with data analysts, you need to be an equal partner.

Thinking beyond ECMs: ECMs are extremely useful for managing documents and records related to a specific function such as contracts, claims, or clinical trials. When it comes to classifying content across an enterprise – and not just records – we need to declare independence and think differently. A single piece of content has many attributes critical for safe and compliant management. Examples include retention rules, hold codes, access rights and security classifications as well as indicators for PII, risk factors and value for analytics.

While reservations remain about auto or assisted classification tools, we have to break through barriers to use machine learning and other technologies to tag content as close to creation as possible to alleviate uncertainty later in the lifecycle. And think about how to leverage workflows to tag content as it moves through a process.

Acting strategic: Align with your employers goals. All organizations want to generate revenue so think about how your RIM program actively supports that. For example, if you experience heavy merger and acquisition activity, prove how your knowledge of organizing, assessing and making disposition decisions can help with the ingestion of new content or the divestiture of old. If you are in an industry that is highly scrutinized and audited by your customers, show how your RIM program maps where their information is stored and that it has proper protection through to its final disposition.

A recurring phrase throughout Hamilton is “look around, look around” and that’s what I encourage you to do in 2016; To look around you and recognize that it’s time to “rise up”. Receive the education you need (and deserve) to meet the challenges of the information revolution, not just for today, but for the future.