Impact areas of an ERM Program

An ERM initiative is not just a collection of one-time projects – it is the start of a long-term commitment.

Impact areas of an ERM Program Include:

Development of Records Management

• Develop and maintain ERM instruments
• Monitor adherence to ERM procedures (for example, audits)
• Disposition reviews – archive/destroy records
• Information Hubs (‘iHubs’) – user support (floor walker)
• In a large organization, these activities may need several dedicated teams
• In a smaller organization, Records Management may be a part-time
  activity

New Ways of working

• Consider the impact on how staff do their work
  • Where do I save my records
  • What do I do with emails?
  • How do I share records?
• Develop Process Models and review them against the ERM system’s capabilities

Acceptance by users

• Affected by the design of the system
• Consider the end user first, then develop the system

Business Processes

• Opportunity for business processes to become:
  • Faste
  • More secur
  • Paper free
• Opportunity for process improvement through ERM and associated tools such as:
  • Workflow and Content Management
• Real opportunity for financial benefits
  • But generally under-exploited

Web Content Management

• Consider internet / intranet / extranet
• Ensure rigorous adherence to the content standards and styles
  • This can be done by defining suitable 'styles' and adding templates to the organization’s word processing application.
• Then automate the process

Change Management

• Importance and cost of Change Management
  • Far more ERM implementations fail because of inadequate resources allocated to change management than any inherent faults in the system or any other aspects of the environment
• Consider in particular
  • Senior management endorsemen
  • Communication
  • Training
  • Helpdesk and User Support

Benefits in small and large organizations

• Benefits of ERM linked strongly to level of adoption
• The wider the scope, the greater the productivity benefits
• Roll-out to small and large organizations may be different
  • Incremental approach
• Ensure all hardware / software decisions conform to the standards

Constantly evolving delivery channels

• All channels (including PDAs, mobile phones and Blackberries) have implications for ERM
• Evaluate how information is created and accessed
  • E-mail message to Blackberr
  • SMS (Short Message Service ) text message to mobile phone
• Now and in the future!

By Carl E. Weise