Why ‘set it and forget it’ information governance matters more than you realise

Progressive organisations' employees who spend an appreciable amount of time working with business information know full well that the sheer volume and variety of content is rapidly growing, leading to governance issues.

This was always an issue for businesses in the process of scaling; however, it has become increasingly difficult in the wake of the still ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. With more employees working from home than ever before, information management solutions have become more than just tools to store important files in the cloud. They have evolved to be the foundation of the workforce, letting people better communicate and collaborate no matter where they are.

This, in essence, is why 'set it and forget it' governance is so important. Every minute that staff spend trying to make sense of the business infrastructure — or trying to get third party technology add-ons to work as expected — is a minute they are not acting on the insight contained in the data. Fortunately, most IT leaders understand the gravity of the situation.

Using an intelligent information management solution helps achieve a 'set it and forget it' governance strategy. With workflow rules, organisations can maintain consistent records management policies. Documents in a governance workflow are overseen by a rule set whereby any of the following happens automatically:

• Records are disposed of or retained according to policy
• Stakeholders are notified to review batches of documents designated for a certain disposition.

In addition, files can be automatically added to the workflow through metadata. If, for instance, a file matches a particular criterion, it is automatically applied to a governance workflow.

Intelligent information management features such as these ensure the information in all repositories across the organisation are standardised with common 'set it and forget it' governance standards. There is no longer a need to transfer important information like records or compliance documents to a separate repository.

This approach to governance previously only worked with records that organisations did not need to use often and created a significant management challenge for everything else. Active records still need to be available with their critical context intact, in a way that lets team members retrieve all relevant documents and see all crucial tasks quickly. Now, these types of records can be actively managed within the intelligent information management platform.

In the end, 'set it and forget it' governance is all about breaking down yet another data silo so information can move freely across the organisation. Rather than forcing employees to use a plethora of different tools just to get work done (increasing the time it takes to complete those important tasks to begin with), they should have access to the vital content and customer data they need — wherever they are working.

The 'set it and forget it' governance is all about making it easier to get the highest return from an organisation's IT spending and technological investment, not harder. However, organisations will still need to make sure that the business strategies driving their technology investments are carefully thought out.

Thankfully, simplicity has emerged as a recurring theme when it comes to embracing intelligent information management cloud platforms and process standardisation, and it could not have come at a better time.