Don't Let the Inmates Run the Asylum
Eliminating Ad Hoc Records Management through
Business Process Improvement
What does the title of this article have to do with Records
Management you ask? Plenty.
This March will mark my 19th year of going on-site at our
clients' companies to observe how records are kept. This year is
also American Micro's 50th anniversary of serving the greater
Kansas City area. We've seen a lot of records!
But let's face it; in most cases, we are called in long after
the problem has ceased to be manageable. That's because each
company associate has devised his or her own ad hoc method for
storing and retrieving records - and believe me, the systems
people come up with vary widely! Without a company-wide strategy
and policies that govern records management, the inmates are, in
effect, running the asylum.
So let me guess what a lot of you might be up to right about
now. We've just ended 2007 and it's time to empty the shelves of
all those records the people in your company generated in 2005
and/or 2006. Most of you will just box them up and ship them off
to the caves for long-term storage.
But wait - ever wonder what's in those boxes? Is there any file
integrity? And worse yet-what if you have to send for the box to
look up something? If you do, will you just shove the record
back into the box when you are done, then ship it back to the
caves.
In previous issues of this newsletter, I have talked about the
day that we might finally be paperless. But this light remains
dim at the end of the tunnel. In the meantime, why not handle
the inevitable archiving and retrieval problem when a record is
at the beginning of its lifecycle? And have you considered that
piece of paper might not need to be generated at all?
Business Process Improvement means looking for ways to improve
each task your business is performing-no matter how mundane the
routine. You are probably thinking that sounds like an obvious
thing to do. But one of the top three records management related
mistakes I hear from companies considering such improvements is
the objection: "We'll have to go through and take out all the
duplicates."
Think of all the time involved in generating all the duplicates,
then storing them, and at some point figuring out which one is
the original - and repeating this "process" every year!
Differences in ad hoc workflow practices probably account for up
to 90 percent of unnecessarily duplicated records. The other 10
percent comes from the fact that when people are involved,
behavior is often very hard to change.
I haven't even touched on reports and emails - which generate
additional paper by a magnitude! Talk about information
overload.
If you would like to know more about Business Process
Improvement and/or the other two biggest mistakes company's make
with records, just send me an email with "BPI" in the subject
line.