Digital Transformation Series: Four Essential Steps for Applying Automation to Information Governance
by Ken Neal
November 7, 2018
This is my final post in this series highlighting why it is critical to streamline your information governance practices and ways you can effectively implement the process. Previously, I spotlighted three key implementation strategies and an important industry trend. In this article I examine four essential steps to consider when applying automation to your information governance practices. They include the following:
Modernize Your Information Infrastructure
Rationalizing and modernizing your information infrastructure is an important first step that includes assessing the current state, developing a set of goals and business requirements to leverage automation, and implementing changes to connect and consolidate repositories, extend information and process accessibility, and increase operational effectiveness.
Digitize Core Compliance and Governance Processes
The next step is to identify processes that will be best suited to automation. Look to reduce or eliminate paper-based and manual activities that slow the process and expose the organization to additional risk. Then apply business rules and technology to automate the identification and classification of information, access controls, and keyword and full-text search.
Utilize Data Capture Functionality
When it comes to information governance, it is important that organizations look further than simply a scan-and-store approach. For many, “digitization” tends to imply scanning a piece of paper and filing away an image file instead. However, you could be entirely paperless but still miss the broader opportunity to leverage information in a way that is increasingly more beneficial to the performance of your organization. Work to utilize in-bound data capture for more than just indexing data for the image. This is at the heart of business intelligence and more expansive information governance.
Information governance and compliance are pressing concerns for C-suite leaders in all industries. With evolving compliance demands, quickly changing technologies, and ever-more-pressing threats in cyber security, it’s easy to lose sleep at night. One way to rest better is to automate information governance and compliance. The technologies and approaches work to solidify your information governance strategy, while ensuring that policies and procedures are performed and adhered to automatically, every day.
Consider Data Remediation
Data remediation is at the heart of any sound information governance program. Employees are using shared and personal hard drives, cloud services and other devices for data storage. This makes it extremely difficult to manage the massive amount of information being created and stored. Under these conditions, there is no elimination of what I referred to in an earlier article as ROT (redundant, obsolete and trivial data); no consistency in storage syntax and naming conventions, and no data cleansing. Service providers such as Canon can provide the analytics to identify what you have, classify that information and cleanse it to eliminate the ROT.
More about the Series
This article concludes the third of a six-part series on how digital transformation will impact the future workplace, and businesses. The series consists of:
1. Digital Transformation and the Future of Work
2. Digitizing Core Business Processes
3. Automating Governance and Compliance
4. Leveraging Machine Learning
6. Recognizing the Evolving Landscape for Talent
As indicated above, my next series of articles will focus on how you can use artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate core business processes and innovate digitally.