Are you on top of your document management? You should be!

In an exclusive interview with BDEE Editor, Jen Dallison, Jürgen Biffar, President of DocuWare says that documents, in whatever form are key to successful business.

JD: What challenges do organisations face in managing their records? Why is data management so important?
JB: Traditionally all records came on paper. Today they still come on paper, but also electronically. Since it is so easy and inexpensive to generate electronic records, the amount is rapidly increasing. To get all those technically different types of records (paper, email, print-spools, PC-files etc.) well organised and archived is the real challenge. And since all legal rules which applied in earlier times for paper records also apply for electronic records, it is very important.

JD: Why have record protection, retention and destruction become such important issues to organisations, in other words how can organisations ensure that their records retention and destruction policies are compliant as well as transparent?
JB: On one side there are new legal rules which in the first rank apply to large organisations or public administration. But also mid-sized organisations are more frequently required to prove appropriate records management procedures to their financers or even to customers. To ensure the compliance of the policies the organisation first has to check which requirements apply to their type of industry.

Sometimes there are checklists available, which could be used, otherwise the organisation has to create one by itself. Finally, processes have to be implemented which ensure the appropriate storage, retention and destruction of the records. These processes need to be well documented. A well developed document and records management system supports these processes and make documentation easy.

JD: What security issues are there surrounding document and information management?
JB: Data loss security and data access security are the two important issues: No documents may get lost and no one may gain access to documents to which they are not authorised.

JD: Okay, so what problems are caused by the ever-increasing data volume flowing into most companies today?
JB: As mentioned before, all this data has to be well structured and organised. This is a resource and a motivation challenge. Motivation mainly of the individual office worker, who has to follow the records management rules. It is the task of a good document and records management system to automate as many storage processes as possible, and to make the manual storing of the rest as easy as possible for the user.

JD: Business continuity in the event of a disaster is of growing concern to many company leaders, so what exactly can a good data storage system help to reassure them? And what should these same CXOs be looking out for?
JB: An open system architecture is pivotal. Documents and retention rules often last longer than the software and system providers. Therefore the company should always make sure, that the document data can be migrated to another system at any time. We already have observed what difficulties new customers had to get their documents from an old, proprietary system into DocuWare. We ourselves fully rely on standard based storage methods and do not lock our customers into our solution.

JD: With worldwide commerce ever more common, what are the key considerations when implementing information management solutions at a global level?
JB: First of all worldwide access to documents and records has to be assured, even for de-centrally stored information. And any system must support multiple languages and provide good support in the different areas of the world. DocuWare Solutions are available in 13 languages and sold and supported in more than 30 countries worldwide.

JD: And what web services solutions are available?
JB: First internet-based solutions are offered as a service today. They mainly cover capturing, archiving, retention and destruction of records. Several of our partners are already using our software to provide such services.

JD: What sort of policies do companies need to have in place? Here, I’m thinking about corporate data model, meta-data repository, policies and policing, broad targets, long-term goals?
JB: There is no general answer possible – unfortunately. This very much depends on the type of organisation, its size and its regional set up.

JD: Finally to sum up, is it true that 85 percent of data is unstructured and that means a raft of faxes, images, sound files, video, all sorts of data that companies can’t yet manage?
JB: Definitely. We are still exchanging information mainly as documents. And don’t forget email! Just look at your own in-box and try to transfer this to a company level. This will suddenly make obvious what we initially discussed: Separating the important from the not so important information and getting all the important information well organised is the basic challenge.

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