AIIM Knowledge Center Blog

The secret word this week: Email

Once again this week we are hearing about email as a source of reference in a hearing and the problematic issue for organizations. I am of course referring to the current inquest into Goldman Sachs and the references made to internal emails between Goldman Sachs employees about how bad the products they were selling were for prospective buyers. (I left out the expletive used but suffice to say there was one in place of the word bad.) When asked by the Congressional inquisitor about the email in question, the response - I am paraphrasing here - was that it was unfortunate that it was written.

 

It is no secret that email is the major pain point in most organizations these days, not only that it exists but how it is used and what to actually keep. Controlling email use should be one of the prime focal points of any organizational policy and that policy should address appropriate use, retention, and disposition. There should be definition as to what constitutes an official record of business and how to declare it for management by the records management department. There should be similar guidelines on content and information not deemed a record but considered having enough value to maintain for a set length of time. Just as important, there needs to be extensive training so the employees are aware of these policies and monitoring of the information environment to ensure these policies are adhered to.

 

It is not my position to judge whether what they did was right or wrong, that is up to the Justice Department and other government officials. I do feel however that there are lessoned to be learned that are missed for whatever reason. You would think that after what happened to Morgan Stanley with regard to email, others would stand up and take notice, yet here we are once again with a financial institution being investigated and email becomes the focal point of interest in moving the case forward.

 

In my view, the tools are there to help manage email, and the policies in place should address email as part of the overall governance of information within the enterprise. I find it difficult to understand how and why so many companies find themselves in precarious positions due to email when it is possible to get it all under control. Maybe this time, the lesson will be learned and others will now stand up and take notice that they too could be at risk in how email is used and how it is managed.

 

What say you? What are your thoughts on this topic and how are you managing your emails?

 

Email: Bob Larrivee – AIIM blarrivee@aiim.org 

Follow me on twitter – BobLarrivee

Interfaces: Customer facing simplicity

 

 Submitted by Bob Larrivee, AIIM Director/Industry Advisor

In the late 1900’s I was fortunate enough to work with a company in the transportation sector that felt simplicity would be a key element in the remote capture of paper documents associated with delivered loads by various trucking companies. The concept was good but I think the culture and even the technology was not quite ready and it never became the wonder tool of the decade. I do however, believe simplicity in this form is still a viable option and with the inception of the ATM and book scanning kiosks in libraries, cultural acceptance of the kiosk is no longer the barrier.

 

While I was at AIIM 2010 in Philadelphia last week, one such device caught my attention; it was a kiosk sitting on the edge of the Hyland Software booth with the hardware marked as PFU Systems, a Fujitsu Company. I later had the good fortune to speak with John Hoye, Director of Business Development for PFU Systems. When I asked John about this venture, he responded, “There is an externally focused self-service aspect to ECM that can be addressed using kiosk technology tightly integrated with ECM technology at the back end (what we are doing with Hyland for example). These solutions will come highly customized to suit the needs of the user (user interface design, card swipes, proximity sensors, etc.).  In other words, the user experience will mean everything to the success of the implementation and thus will be designed as such (as opposed to grouping off-the-shelf technologies).  I think this flexibility along with technology is core to PFU’s strength as a kiosk provider.”

 

When looking at the application in place at AIIM 2010 it was obviously clear to me that what John had stated was in fact real. In this case the kiosk represented a local government agency providing the ability for citizens to pay bills using a card swipe, access various public records and documents, through use of a USB connection, download various forms and applications for processing. The fact that there is USB capability also implies that sometime in the future, a kiosk of this type could also incorporate a scanner of some type allowing the user to capture all forms of information and feed the systems rather than feed off it.

 

In my view, this type of device coupled with the back end solution presented by Hyland Software is a prime example of taking ECM to the masses in a more intuitive way by extending the enterprise into the user realm. Imagine the possibilities and applications for devices like these. In my theoretical model you could find these in the local Seven-Eleven possibly combined with the ATM to provide full banking capabilities like getting cash, accessing your accounts, applying for loans and much more. Why with a scanner attached you could even use these in place of fax machines where you access the scanner that is attached to the kiosk, scan your documents and upload them to a specific location or email them. In the trucking industry, one can scan and send the documents from the kiosk directly to the accounting department for processing, all while getting fuel and coffee.

 

I know I am missing a lot here but I hope I got my message across that simplicity and mobility is key in extending the enterprise. Providing access to the information from anywhere at any time in an intuitive and simple way is what will determine success. I tend to agree with N P Negroponte “it is not computer literacy we should be working on, but human-literacy. Computers have to become human-literate.”  In the kiosks, I see the beginning of human-literacy.

 

What say you? Did you attend AIIM 2010 and see something you would like to share? Are you a patient who has fallen victim to a security breach? Do you have a story to tell? I want to hear from you.

 

Looking to learn more about intelligent information and process management?

 

Join us for the BPM Certificate course in:

San Francisco 05/25/10 - 05/28/10

 

Join us for the ECM Certificate course in:

San Diego 05/04/10 - 05/07/10

Denver 05/18/10 - 05/21/10

Calgary 05/25/10 - 05/28/10

Silver Spring 06/08/10 - 06/11/10

Houston 06/15/10 - 06/18/10

 

We look forward to seeing you there. Do you have several individuals who need training? Contact us to find out how a private class can save you on registration costs.

 

Bob Larrivee – AIIM blarrivee@aiim.org

Follow me on twitter – BobLarrivee and remember to visit www.aiim.org/training and www.informationzen.org, AIIM’s free social network created just for you.

 

The party's over....

 

 Submitted by Bob Larrivee, AIIM Director/Industry Advisor

 

Well here we are, the week after AIIM 2010, the largest ECM focused event on the planet which was held in Philadelphia. As a new acquaintance of mine, Millie from West Philly put it, “you can see a lot of things here but what does it all mean?” Well Millie, you are right, we did all see a lot of things there and now it is time to digest what was seen and heard, try to make sense of it all and take that back to our organizations where it will be useful. I had a great opportunity to meet with several vendors who I felt had something different to say or show and will now try to present that here to you, hopefully doing it justice.

 

Kiosks were an interesting topic of discussion and while I heard of several, one was there and stood out in the Hyland Software booth that held the label of PFU Systems, a Fujitsu company. This device is designed for general access and the application shown by Hyland focused on public documents like land records. The kiosk and application can also manage payments was presented as being HIPAA and ADA compliant making placement more flexible. I had some experience with kiosks in the late 1990’s and while the concept was good, the culture was not ready. I think this is a winner and look forward to further adaptations where capture is extended through USB connected devices including scanners. Plustek also discussed use of kiosks in library environments and presented a full line of capture devices ranging from film scanners to scanners that bring audio to captured paper by leveraging text to speech capabilities. According to Mark Druziak, Director of Marketing, “Plustek offers a broad portfolio of specialty capture devices addressing a diverse array of formats supported by outstanding levels of customer service.”

 

Open Source and the “cloud” were topics to be found in a lot of discussions and this was no exception for Nuxeo and Digitech Systems. In the Open Source space, Cheryl McKinnon, Chief Marketing Officer of Nuxeo noted that “one of the challenges faced by many organizations is the flexibility and agility needed to link various applications together with their document management solution quickly, in order to accurately meet the information management and access needs of the organization. Nuxeo Studio provides this ability and is supported by one of the leading teams in the industry.” As for Digitech Systems, while they offer both on premise and hosted or SaaS models, they feel the levels of security, live support and increased focus on professional services to assist with integration efforts and a myriad of other services is a strong point for them. When asked what our readers should take away with them about Digitech, Sean Morris, Sales Director stated, “The Digitech SaaS offering, ImageSilo, combined with our world-class support, is the best business option available. We invite those seeking a solution to test us and find out for themselves.”    

 

In the land of recognition, Mobile was the buzz on the floor and ABBYY was at the forefront with a line of applications ranging from their business card reader which allows you to populate your phone contacts by taking a photo of a business card to ABBYY Lingvo Mobile multi-lingual dictionary for immediate translation and accurate pronunciation. Meanwhile at the CVision booth the focus was on speed referencing the ability to process up to 20 pages per second with capabilities of on the fly forms recognition all founded in over 50 years of experience. Entering the scene from Australia, David Wollstencroft of DocsCorp points out that “secure integrated workflow is essential to organizational efficiency and the ability to bring multiple output formats into a single point of access leveraging redaction and document comparison technologies is essential to the success of any organization. Recognizing this, we feel that education plays a strong role not only for our internal personnel but our clients and prospects as well.”

 

On the process automation front, Esther Apter, M Technologies CEO cited, “Today you cannot live without the tools and equipment for process management” as she coordinated a demonstration of the simplicity of the M Technologies mWorkFLOW offering using a simple dialog interface to create the various workflow scenarios for an organization.

 

In my view, while I cannot say there was any earth shattering or revolutionary unveilings this year, the underlying tone was one of focus toward increased flexibility, simplicity, and interoperability within the vendor community. I saw interesting evolutionary changes in the interfaces and the sense that emphasis is turning toward process centric implementations that enable single point of access and mobile access points to information of all types regardless of format and location. This in my opinion is a strong step forward and one that addresses the ever changing user landscape in a more direct way. Delivering the right information to the right people at the right time is what ECM is all about.

 

 What say you? Did you attend AIIM 2010 and see something you would like to share? Are you a patient who has fallen victim to a security breach? Do you have a story to tell? I want to hear from you.

 

Looking to learn more about intelligent information and process management?

 

Join us for the BPM Certificate course in:

San Francisco 05/25/10 - 05/28/10

 

Join us for the ECM Certificate course in:

San Diego 05/04/10 - 05/07/10

Denver 05/18/10 - 05/21/10

Calgary 05/25/10 - 05/28/10

Silver Spring 06/08/10 - 06/11/10

Houston 06/15/10 - 06/18/10

 

We look forward to seeing you there. Do you have several individuals who need training? Contact us to find out how a private class can save you on registration costs.

 

Bob Larrivee – AIIM blarrivee@aiim.org

Follow me on twitter – BobLarrivee and remember to visit www.aiim.org/training and www.informationzen.org, AIIM’s free social network created just for you.

After The Policy Has Been Approved

After the records and information policy is developed and approved, it needs to be communicated to your employees.  There should be more than one announcement, or communication, to the employees and training may very well be needed if the policy is comprehensive.

The first step is to publish the policy widely using all of the communications methods available to the organization.  These could include the following:

-           Organizational newsletter.  Not all organizations have these, but those that do often see them read by the majority of employees. These could be printed or electronic; the important point is that the policy or, at least, reference to it and its location should be published in the newsletter and perhaps should be published numerous times.

-           Email blasts, posting to the intranet, posting to the portal, or posting to the organization blog or blogs.  These are all variations on the theme of publishing the policy electronically.  The nice thing about these is that the same content can be distributed quickly and easily through a variety of mechanisms, making it difficult for your employees to miss.

-           Through meetings, workshops, or facilitated sessions.  These group sessions might be conducted by the policy team, business unit leaders, senior management, or even an outside facilitator.  The goal is to quickly disseminate the policy, while at the same time, soliciting feedback through discussion.  The more questions that can be answered, the easier it will be to get compliance with your policy.

-           Through one-on-one counseling.  This is more often required for employees who are reluctant to embrace the new policy.

-           And as part of the new employee orientation and in the employee manual.  The easiest time to train your users on the policy is when they first join the organization because the new policy will be the only one they know.

Next, and perhaps, as part of the publication process, your organization must train users on the expectations for compliance with the policy. Senior management must show their support for the policy and reinforce the expectations that the policy is to be followed.

Users must be trained on HOW to comply with the policies and related procedures. They must understand exactly what is required and in what fashion it must be executed. This training should also be made available for review and delivered as a periodic refresher.

Your organization should make job aids and references available to the staff. These could include:

-          The records management and/or email policy, itself

-          Training materials

-          Decision flows, where appropriate

-          Samples, for example, of what the staff will see when they capture their electronic records.

Your organization must provide time for staff to come into compliance with the new requirements. An organization that has not had their staff drag and drop their files and emails into a structured repository cannot reasonably expect users to properly capture 100 percent of their content. The time period required to adjust will vary according to the size and complexity of the organization and the requirements of the policy, but it need not be lengthy.

Once you have implemented the policy, your organization will need to monitor for compliance with it.  This could be done in a number of ways, including active system monitoring where applicable and legal, statistical sampling of records captured, or setting rules up to monitor, or block, certain types of content or attachments.

The organization should also solicit feedback about the policy, both positive and negative.  This could be done through meetings or workshops, surveys, or anonymous suggestions.  But often, the only way users will willingly volunteer feedback is when something goes wrong; better to ask before that happens.

You may need to provide refresher training as required.  For a records and/or email policy, this might happen every year or when users change roles.  And users should certainly receive training when procedures are updated.

Tell us about your experiences in implementing new policies?

Tell us about the ways of communication and training that worked for you and, perhaps, so that were not as useful?

Join us for an ERM Certificate course in:

• Chicago                05/11/10 - 05/14/10
• Toronto                06/22/10 - 06/25/10

Students who are Certified Records Managers (CRM) should apply for ICRM maintenance credits at a rate of 6.5 credits per classroom day! 

 

Join us for an EMM Certificate course in:

• Silver Spring       05/04/10 - 05/07/10

We look forward to seeing you there!

Carl Weise – AIIM            cweise@aiim.org

Also, visit www.aiim.org/training and www.informationzen.org – AIIM’s free social network created just for you.

Memory Lane

 

 Submitted by Alex Visser, AIIM Industry Advisor

 

Dear reader, as you might have noticed, I tend to write about things that crossed my path recently and somehow caught my attention. Well the one thing that definitely caught my attention this week was the volcanic eruptions in Iceland.

 

While I was in the Middle East talking to some people about ECM implementations in large organisations, I did read something about an eruption. Truth be told, it registered only as some curious bit of news that you hear every week. When I landed I did wonder about the long lines at the international train desk and I asked myself what might have happened to cause this. Only when I finally got home and heard the local news did I realize that I had landed just before the European airspace was closed down and I had to leave for the USA in 2 days again, because I wanted and needed to go the AIIM Info360 show in Philadelphia, regarded as the largest ECM focused show in the world. This is an event I look forward to, to both deliver a one day fast track training, to see what is happening in the ECM world and meet up with old friends. After some desperate checking, it quickly became obvious that there was not going to be any flying to the USA and by the time I could fly most of the show would be over.

 

While this was happening, my father’s voice rang out from memory lane: “Alex in business you always have to be prepared for everything”. A point he was very willing to teach me the hard way one time, in rather similar extraordinary circumstances. Even though I still feel I had no blame in that situation either. But that is the rub. He is right in saying that you have to go to some lengths to plan for mishaps. In any project you need to do risk analysis, create your fallback plans and alternative options. This is a very important step, one that many take lightly. However, as this week has proven some things are so out of the scope of an implementation or in my case out scope for travel, but they can have a major impact.

 

As I told my father when I was a much younger man I will tell you, my dear reader, as well. You cannot plan for all eventualities. Yes you should try to plan as much as possible, but at the same time the implementation team and the people in general need to be flexible as well. The skill to adapt to the changing circumstances is an important one. Yes taking smaller steps/phases in an implementation helps to make things more manageable, but as the Americans say you have to be able to go with the flow. Unfortunately for me this meant not going to the USA but I hope you had the opportunity to visit this marvellous event and learn what is new in the ECM world and maybe meet up with old friends. I will have to wait until next year. Maybe I will meet you there as a new friend. If you are in the UK or Europe feel free to come to the AIIM UK Road show. It is not as big as the USA event but still worth a visit.

 

Let me know if you will be joining us on our road show or tell me how you like the info360.

 

Off course you could also attend one of our training courses to learn more about ECM and meet either my Colleagues’ or me. The AIIM website will tell you all about it and the different locations.

 

The upcoming ECM courses are:

San Diego 05/04/10 - 05/07/10

London 05/04/10 – 05/07/10

Denver 05/18/10 - 05/21/10

Utrecht  05/18/10 – 05/21/10

Calgary 05/25/10 - 05/28/10

Silver Spring 06/08/10 - 06/11/10

Houston 06/15/10 - 06/18/10

 

Alex Visser – AIIM   alex.visser@aiim.eu

Follow me on Twitter @AlexVisser

As the excitement builds....

 

  by Bob Larrivee, AIIM Director/Industry Advisor

 

Not long from now the official opening of AIIM 2010 will begin here in Philadelphia. There is a great lineup of sessions, speakers and vendors that promise to bring new ideas, fresh products and a variety of perspectives to the forefront. If the excitement of the attendees at yesterday’s AIIM Preconference Training sessions is an indicator, there is a significant increase in awareness and drive to move organizations forward in their efforts to better manage content and processes.

 

If you are in the greater Philadelphia area, take time to stop in and join in the excitement.

 

Is your HealthCare Provider Listed?

 

 Submitted by Bob Larrivee, Director/Industry Advisor

 

Not long ago I wrote about what at the time was the newly released mandate from the current Administration that all patient records must be digital by 2014. Shortly thereafter I wrote about how Health and Human Services came out with another mandate related to the reporting of patient security breaches. (I will be discussing Digital Patient Records in my session next week at AIIM 2010 in Philadelphia.) In preparing for this event, I went back to see how things are in the world of security breaches and visited the HHS site that reports breaches.

 

This site identifies those who have reported a breach affecting 500 or more individuals and began several months ago. As of today, there are more than 55 facilities listed representing over one million people whose private information may have been inappropriately accessed by unauthorized personnel. The locations of where the breaches range from paper to email to laptops and servers. In some cases it is the HealthCare facility itself at fault while in others, it is associated business partners. The form of breach also varies from theft, to incorrect mailings with many citing theft or unauthorized access as the cause.

 

In my view, going digital is not the only solution to patient record security. Organizations must have better control over both digital and physical information which means stronger governance policies and more frequent auditing or monitoring to ensure security is maintained. To a degree, this supports the move to digital for when combined with the tools found in Business Process Management (BPM) and Enterprise Content Management (ECM) environments, records and information are tracked to monitor and report all activity. These systems do not take the place of governance but act as tools in support of governance policy and serve to enforce governance policies. While they will serve well in protecting patient information, there is still the human factor that requires regular training on policy, process and technologies used to secure your information.

I hope your provider is not on this list and that they are taking the steps needed to establish a secure environment that combines their Electronic Health Records (EHR) system with other technologies to control and manage all of the information about you and how it is moved through the organization in a safe a secure way.

 

 What say you? Are you a HealthCare provider who is addressing these requirements today? Are you a patient who has fallen victim to a security breach? Do you have a story to tell? I want to hear from you.

 

Looking to learn more about intelligent information and process management?

 

Join us for the BPM Certificate course in:

San Francisco 05/25/10 - 05/28/10

 

Join us for the ECM Certificate course in:

San Diego 05/04/10 - 05/07/10

Denver 05/18/10 - 05/21/10

Calgary 05/25/10 - 05/28/10

Silver Spring 06/08/10 - 06/11/10

Houston 06/15/10 - 06/18/10

 

We look forward to seeing you there. Do you have several individuals who need training? Contact us to find out how a private class can save you on registration costs.

 

Bob Larrivee – AIIM blarrivee@aiim.org

Follow me on twitter – BobLarrivee and remember to visit www.aiim.org/training and www.informationzen.org, AIIM’s free social network created just for you.

Aim! Fire! Hit!

 

 Submitted by Alex Visser, AIIM Industry Advisor

 

For those of you who have not figured it out yet, I am Dutch and in the Netherlands we have an expression, which loosely translated, goes as follows: If you do not fire, you will surely miss. Now this is an obvious truth if you never loosen your arrow or fire you gun, you will definitely not hit your target. The motivation behind the expression is to better try to achieve something, because if you do not even try, you will definitely not achieve anything, but if you try you will always achieve something.

 

Note the expression did not mention anything about aiming, probably since it is a hidden assumption, something of which in a project can be a big pain. I believe that aiming is very important to hit a target and yes not firing will mean I will never hit it, but by not aiming I have not improved my chances much. By now you are probably thinking, what is he aiming at with this story? (Excuse the pun I just could not resist it.) I recently had an experience with an organisation that is taking some big steps to implement an ECM system and by listening to their stories I have to say that they have a very well organised setup to support such a project.

 

However, after having spent some time with them, I walked away with the above mentioned Dutch expression running through my mind. It became clear to me that they did appreciate the value of information and are trying to capture that, but - there always has to be a “but” in these stories - unfortunately I did not get the feeling that they had figured out what their goal, their aim, is. From an ECM implementation point of view I feel that this is a dangerous approach. In the AIIM ECM Certificate program we always spend a lot of time to focus on the drivers and goals for the organisation to start such a project. The MIKE2 methodology also underpins that by focusing the first stage on defining those goals. The following logic can be applied by defining the following:

·         Strategic business vision

·         Strategic critical success factors (CSFs)

·         Strategic key performance indicators (KPIs)

·         Strategic success measures

·         Strategic change drivers

 

First have a big goal setup that will last for longer than the initial project, a long term vision to guide the team and the implementation. From this you start to work to a more granular and specific level each time. What defines a successful project and what indicators can we have that are linked to those success factors? The next step would be to define the actual measurement element for the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) so it can be monitored over time. The last step is closely linked to the vision and success factors, since they are the drivers, internal and external, that will motivate the organisation to work towards the defined vision.

 

It is my belief that defining these elements will be a crucial first step for every ECM implementation because otherwise, you might implement something, but still be uncertain if you have achieved what you want, or in other words you might fire but you have no guarantee of hitting a target.

 

What do you think is crucial at the beginning of an ECM implementation? Please let us know.

If you want to learn more about ECM or one of its related topics feel free to look at the AIIM courses on our website.

 

The upcoming ECM courses are:

San Diego 05/04/10 - 05/07/10

London 05/04/10 – 05/07/10

Denver 05/18/10 - 05/21/10

Utrecht  05/18/10 – 05/21/10

Calgary 05/25/10 - 05/28/10

Silver Spring 06/08/10 - 06/11/10

Houston 06/15/10 - 06/18/10

I'm the customer!

 

 Submitted by Bob Larrivee, AIIM Director/Industry Advisor

 

 

 

Technology is a wonderful thing but I think it is at times, overused. As two examples, I had to go to the bank today and also file a claim on a defective USB Broadband stick for my PC. (I must have been working so hard the stick burned itself up, literally!) Anyway, when I went to the bank’s drive up window the only lanes open were the distant lanes with the tube you use for transactions. The drive up window with the slide out tray is no longer there and the windows have been sealed with a reflective metal. The teller interacted with me via video/audio link. This was apparently done as a precautionary measure of security. I suppose if I want the personalized feeling, I will now have to enter the bank as opposed to using the drive up going forward.

 

In the case of my USB Stick, I phoned the carrier and was immediately put into the endless automated systems loop with the voice recognition interface. When asked who I was, I answered that I am a customer and the system did not recognize it. I was then moved into another loop where once again I was moved through a series of questions until I finally reached a point where the system sent to a customer service representative. (Note: there was no way to exit the voice system using the keypad.) This agent cordially listened to my situation, assessed the problem and found a resolution. Replace the defective device, a solution with which I fully agree. At this point, I was redirected to the division that handles claims and once again placed into the netherworld of automated systems. The upside of this one is that it only took answering four questions before I was transferred to a live person.

In my view, technology is a wonderful thing and when applied correctly to the right situation, it is an excellent tool to maximize efficiency and lower costs but you have to also consider alternatives from the customer perspective, and yes, I am the customer. While these systems are good, the key to all of this is the customer experience. When I go to the drive up window of the bank, I do not want a video interface I enjoy seeing the live person and the interaction that follows. If I wanted to interact with technology, I would have just gone to the ATM which may in fact be what they want anyway.

 

In the case of the support line for my Broadband carrier, there should be a way to bypass all of the nonsense of answering to a recognition system that cannot recognize, and allow me to make a keypad selection that sends me right to the representative who will only ask me all of the same questions I tried to answer to begin with. That brings up another point in using technology. If I provided you with the information already, and it is in theory in your system, why do I have to constantly repeat myself every time I am passed to the next in line of your process? Shouldn’t the information I provided transfer and move through the process with me automatically? Something to think about when designing your processes and implementing automation technology; the customer experience. Be one and see how you like your own company when you are done.

 

What say you? Have you been your own customer and how well do you apply automation technologies? Do you have a story to tell? I want to hear from you.

 

Looking to learn more about intelligent information and process management?

 

Join us for the BPM Certificate course in:

San Francisco 05/25/10 - 05/28/10

 

Join us for the ECM Certificate course in:

San Diego 05/04/10 - 05/07/10

Denver 05/18/10 - 05/21/10

Calgary 05/25/10 - 05/28/10

Silver Spring 06/08/10 - 06/11/10

Houston 06/15/10 - 06/18/10

 

We look forward to seeing you there. Do you have several individuals who need training? Contact us to find out how a private class can save you on registration costs.

 

Bob Larrivee – AIIM blarrivee@aiim.org

Follow me on twitter – BobLarrivee and remember to visit www.aiim.org/training and www.informationzen.org, AIIM’s free social network created just for you.

Designing a Training Program for an ERM Implementation

Submitted by Carl Weise, Industry Advisor

 

As we implement an ERM environment within our organizations, training is critical.  It starts with the development of a training plan.  This plan describes what content is to be delivered, to what audiences, and in what fashion.   Training will need to be provided on records management concepts and the importance of records management broadly.  It should also address organizational records management concepts, policies, and expectations.  It needs to identify the responsibilities for records management across the organization and according to role. 

 

The plan should also identify different specific training needs for records managers, for support staff, for other specialized staff such as IT and legal, and for management.  This last may not be training as much as awareness and education.  The plan will outline how to acquire the training – in other words, whether the organization will create all of its own training materials, whether it will acquire them from a third-party for internal delivery, whether it will simply hire a third-party training firm to deliver the content in some fashion, or some combination of these. 


Each of these approaches will require different levels of resources, different types of expertise, and will result in a different approach to the design of the training content and the training process.  The plan needs to identify which approaches to take with regards to delivery of the training.  Options can range from instructor-led, face-to-face training, immersive online courseware, to a simple self-study training manual.  Formal training should be supported by exercises, handouts, and additional references.

 

 Finally, if your organisation will deliver content using your instructors, there will need to be a step in the process to train the prospective trainers, not only on the course materials, but also on adult learning theory, how to teach the content and how to run the exercises. Some form of ‘training needs analysis” should be undertaken as part of this planning.   You will need to:

- Identify the current baseline competencies of general users and specialized staff in IT, records management, and legal; and

 - Determine what users and other relevant parties need to know in order to use the ERM environment effectively, given the expected level of support.

 

 Once, you understand the training needs, you can determine:

 - The best ways and means of ensuring that users have the requisite level of skills by the time the environment goes live and they have to use it.   This may include a mixture of face-to-face briefings, classroom training and/or online training,

 - What level of support will be required after go-live and the best way to deliver this support?

 - What type of ongoing or refresher training is required for general users?

 - What type of training is required for specialized users?

- What type of training is required for the system administrators and support staff?

 

AIIM’s ERM Practitioner Course is an excellent tool to bring awareness and a sound understanding of electronic records management to your staff!

 

Tell us about your successes in developing training programs for your staff.

What challenges have you faced in providing records management awareness to your organizations?

 

Join us for an ERM Certificate course in:

• Chicago           05/11/10 - 05/14/10
• Toronto           06/22/10 - 06/25/10
  

Students who are Certified Records Managers (CRM) should apply for ICRM maintenance credits at a rate of 6.5 credits per classroom day! 

 

Join us for an EMM Certificate course in:

• Silver Spring    05/04/10 - 05/07/10
  

We look forward to seeing you there!

Carl Weise – AIIM       cweise@aiim.org

Also, visit www.aiim.org/training and www.informationzen.org – AIIM’s free social network created just for you.