AIIM Knowledge Center Blog

Making Strides and Taking Pride: Susan Parker and Central Vermont Public Service

Susan Parker of Central Vermont Public Service is the first AIIM student to achieve the designation of IOA Master in the utilities sector. Susan is but one great example of the many students whose organization is faced with the challenges of Information Organization and Access and who are taking proactive measures to gain control over information through education. We congratulate Susan on being the first in her industry to achieve Master status. I recently had the opportunity to correspond with Susan Parker, an AIIM Student and IOA Master. Here is an excerpt of our conversation.

Bob: Susan, I want to thank you for allowing me to interview you and for the record, can you provide me with a description of your company and your role with the company?

Susan:  Thank you Bob for this opportunity to pass on the experience I had with the AIIM training programs.

I am employed at Central Vermont Public Service (CVPS) an independent, investor-owned company that provides energy and energy-related services to its customers in Vermont. We were pleased to learn that we were the first IOA Master in the Utility segment.

My role with CVPS is to help all employees with total information management. I also serve as a liaison between the users and company leaders.

Bob:  When did you get the idea to make AIIM Education part of your training focus and what were the drivers for the decision?

Susan: As with most companies information management is a fairly new field. My background was not in information management and my position as Information Management Analyst is new here at CVPS. The AIIM certificate program worked well for us as continuing education and training are part of our goals. 

Information overload was one of the main drivers.  Users have so many storage areas to manage, email, drive spaces, personal areas and a document management space. Information management is a discipline that was missing in the company.  CVPS wanted "boots on the ground" to help users close the gap between their work and best practice.

There was a need for training and education both for myself and for CVPS.  AIIM offers a variety of classes that covered our needs from beginner to finishing with the Masters program. The hands on training and the ability to address our corporate specific needs, was very beneficial.

Bob:  What do you see as a benefit for you and future attendees of these programs?

Susan: With the constant changes in technology and the ways of managing our company's information enterprise wide, it is difficult to keep up with all the advances.  AIIM is on top of these changes and new technologies.  AIIM offered the convenience of either classroom and/or online certificate programs.

Bob:  For the future, how do you see the role of AIIM education evolving for you and perhaps your peers?

Susan:  We are looking to AIIM as the leader in not only the structural management of information, but also the leader on the technology side of managing information.  We will look to AIIM to educate us on these advances.

Bob: I want to thank you Susan, for taking time to talk with me and for sharing your valuable insights and perspectives with our readers.

It is time you took a step forward by signing up for a class today at www.aiim.org/training.

 If you are a past student of the AIIM Training Programs, I would like to hear from you and learn how AIIM Training has helped you and your organization.

Bob Larrivee - AIIM

Email Management, what about IM?

We know that email today is the most relied upon form of communication in business today. It is estimated that an organization of 1,000 employees could potentially represent 34 million emails annually. This is a staggering number to say the least but what of Instant Messages (IM)?

It is estimated that by 2010, the number of instant messages sent daily will reach or exceed 65 million per day. Of this, it is expected that 35% or more will be business related. Think about this for you organization. Do you allow the use of IM? If so, do you have policies and procedures in place to address this iinformation as a record or content that is of a business nature? What if you were called to produce IM as part of a discovery process? Where do you start?

AIIM training is a great place to begin. www.aiim.org/training as Email, IM and more types of information emerge and continue to populate our systems. The question is do you prepare today or wait until you are forced to address the issue of managing it.

Do you use IM in your organization and if so, how? I want to hear from you.

Bob Larrivee - AIIM.

Industry Watch: State of the ECM Industry 2009

Now in its 6th year, this keynote AIIM survey has tracked many important parameters, particularly highlighting an alarming lack of confidence in the accuracy and accessibility of electronic records in general, and emails in particular. For this survey we are also measuring ROI factors and exploring levels of ECM integration. Please help us to promote the benefits of ECM by taking part:  www.aiimhost.com/survey .  AIIM will make a charity donation for your participation. 

What is Email Management?

What is Email Management?

View more presentations from Atle Skjekkeland. (tags: aiim skjekkeland)

What is BPM?

What is BPM?

View more presentations from Atle Skjekkeland. (tags: bpm aiim)

Who will become AIIM course attendee number 10,000?

The AIIM Certificate programs have grown to become the leading training programs in information and process management with approx 9,500+ attendees taking more than 13,000 courses in just 3 years. We expect to reach 10,000 unique attendees in February or March this year, and attendee number 10,000 will receive a $250 gift certificate in addition to a complimentary access to one of our online training courses worth $750. Remember to check out all of AIIM's training offerings;

AIIM ESSENTIALS ONLINE COURSES:

• Evaluating SharePoint 
• Imaging and Recognition 
• Web Content Management (WCM) 
• Digital Asset Management (DAM) 
• eDiscovery 
• PDF/A 

The new AIIM Essentials programs have been designed for use as a series of standalone online courses that are focused on very specific topics applicable to any organization, and are a perfect complement to enhance the training our students have received from our current educational Certificate offerings;

AIIM CERTIFICATE PROGRAMS LEADING TO AN AIIM PRACTITIONER, SPECIALIST AND MASTER DESIGNATION:

• Enterprise Content Management (ECM) - Learn how to take control of your information assets
• Electronic Records Management (ERM) - Learn how to take control of your electronic records
• Business Process Management (BPM) - Learn how to improve your business processes
• Information Organization and Access (IOA) -Learn how to optimize findability and enterprise search
• Email Management (EMM) - Learn how to improve the control of corporate emails 
• Enterprise 2.0 (E2.0) - Learn how to use Web 2.0 technologies to improve collaboration and innovation across the enterprise 

For more information please go to www.aiim.org/training or call AIIM at 301-755-2631

By Atle Skjekkeland, AIIM

Challenges: Our Expanding Digital Universe

It is expected that by 2011, our digital world or universe, will have expanded to 10 times the size it was in 2005. This is due to many factors that include the increasing use of email.  Think about the impact this is having in your business. How many emails do you typically get in one day and how many do you send? We have found that the typical worker deals with approximately 150 emails daily on average. As such we need to sort through them and identify the relevant information for our business, discarding those items that are not. This scenario is becoming the norm in many businesses and is just one more reason why we need to gain control and manage this information as well as our official records.

What this is telling us is that we should carefully craft, implement and enforce our policies and procedures in relation to records management yet all too often what we have are digital landfills where all of our information and records are stored on shared drives in shared folders without structure and little security. Add email to this picture and the rate of growth and the challenge grows exponentially. Just think about how and where email is being managed today and the effort you would require to find it. Add to this the need and complexity of applying metadata properly so that this business critical information can be found.

We know information comes in all forms and all types. We know there is a driving need to manage this information properly in order to comply with regulatory guidelines our industry and government put in place but also to meet the demand to produce this information in times of civil litigation. To accomplish this, we know that we need proper policies in place, people trained and technology to support it all. What we sometimes do not know, is how to start or what path is best to take in our journey of managing information properly.

The good news is that you have an association like AIIM that understands these challenges and has created a series of educational programs that specifically address these topics at several levels. This can be found at www.aiim.org/training and is available to you round the clock all year long.

What challenges are you facing today and how are you approaching them? I would like to hear from you.

 

Bob Larrivee - AIIM