by EDMS Consultants Sdn Bhd | Nov 30, 2020 | information management, intelligent information management, M-Files, Uncategorized
According to Gartner, information contributes at least 20-25% of an average organization’s value today. Studies have uncovered countless ways to use data as an asset to help improve businesses by reducing costs, improving customer satisfaction, and managing risks. Along with the paradigm shift towards valuing information as an asset, companies also need to find opportunities to maximize its worth by focusing more upon data governance. The rapid escalation in the number of information organizations need to handle makes governance even more critical.
How Data Volume and Value Make Data Governance Essential
Data governance covers everything related to managing the security, accessibility, quality, and usability of information within an organization. For example, it includes steps taken to ensure businesses have reliable, protected, and accurate information to make better decisions and help serve customers. A governance plan generally includes policies and the tools to implement and enforce those rules.
As quoted on TechTarget, Gartner analyst Andrew White said that most of all, good governance don’t stand alone. Instead, businesses should consider it a core piece of their strategy to achieve overall business goals.
HubSpot created a simple but compelling infographic to illustrate how the rising tide of the volume, value, and even a variety of data underscores the importance of data governance. Some figures they published include:
- Out of all data created in the world, 90 percent has been generated within the past two years, an escalating trend that will almost certainly continue.
- Typical organizations spend 3.5 to 7.0 percent of their overall revenue on information technology. For example, a company with $100 million in revenue might expend up to $7 million just on managing information.
- Out of organizations polled, three-quarters viewed information governance as a critical factor to their success.
- At the same time as most of the information workers viewed information management as vital, less than half thought that top executives understood the importance of governance the as very important.
The Association for Intelligent Information Management (AIIM) contributed the statistics used in the infographic. They also noted a trend that the most high-performing businesses strove to integrate governance into their overall strategy, so that supports Andrew White’s point above.
More specifically, 42 percent of these high performers already had robust plans in place and another 24 percent had made plans to follow. Of the rest, 13 percent had begun their efforts with only some departments, 16 percent had policies that were still in incubation, and only five percent had no formal governance policies at all.
The Future of Improved Data Governance
Traditionally, businesses set information governance policies crafted to reduce risks. For example, these companies wanted to ensure they protected and managed their data to avoid compliance problems and to preserve high-quality information for reporting. According to AIIM, today’s high-performing companies would also add the additional benefits of improving customer service, responding faster to changes, and to make better decisions through analytics and high-quality data.
To improve information governance, AIIM suggested including three vital steps:
- Establish an IG team: Start with top leadership and include critical stakeholders and of course, the IT department. Make certain employees understand how managing, controlling, and protecting information will improve business and in turn, their own situations. Keep the door open for feedback on initial plans to all levels.
- Audit existing information: Organizations need to understand, classify, and audit their information to have any chance of assigning both value and risk. This process can offer you all sorts of value because you will know which sorts of data you should spend the most on protecting, storing, and accessing and which data you might invest less in archiving. Sometimes, you may uncover valuable data that you could use if you only knew it existed.
- Weed out what you don’t need: Information ROT refers to the kind of redundant, obsolete, and trivial data that can bog down your storage, systems, and processes. According to Veritas, a storage tech company, about one-third of all data stored will never be useful or used. Another 50 percent is considered “dark data” with no known value. Together, these provide no value and run up cumulative excess costs of trillions of dollars worldwide. Alternatively, you may find some of this dark data valuable and realize you need to invest more in protecting and using it.
At M-Files, we built our business around the importance of helping our customers control and manage information through its lifecycle. With automatic and even AI-enabled features, this system lets you manage records from conception to eventual deletion or archival. You can even set security and processing features that ensure compliance with your company’s governance policies and most efficient business procedures. At the same time, editing rules will maintain data quality and reduce human error. Even better, you can turn to one interface to find anything, no matter where it’s stored or even from which remote location you need to access it from.
You and your team can focus on the challenging task of creating good information governance policies and processes. After that, you can set rules within M-Files to ensure they’re enforced. Give us a chance to show you exactly how M-Files will improve your governance and overall business by contacting us today with your questions or requests for a demo or free trial.
Source: https://www.m-files.com/blog/the-paradigm-shift-in-information-management-means-a-shift-in-information-governance-as-well/
by EDMS Consultants Sdn Bhd | Nov 27, 2020 | customer communication management, driving digital, Newgen, Uncategorized
Do you track the number of notifications and alerts you receive daily? As customers, we receive multiple notifications from our service providers.
- Banks send account transactions, monthly statements, service updates, new schemes and offers, etc.
- Insurers share policy renewal reminders, payment reminders, new policy issuance notifications, etc.
- Telecom providers send us monthly bills, payment reminders, new plans, etc.
- Utility players send invoice details or other regulatory information
- And the list goes on.
Aren’t such notifications the most common interactions an organization has with its consumers? And yet, they do not contribute anything to a customer’s experience. They just serve an informational purpose.
According to a study, 95% of transactional communications are opened and read each month as they contain important financial information and usually require action. With such a high click and conversion rate, it is imperative for organizations to create a WOW experience for users through these notifications. Not only would this help organizations build confidence in their customers, but it would also help them gain an edge over their competitors.
With a modern customer communication management (CCM) suite, businesses can revamp these notifications to gain customer loyalty.
Following are some ways in which CCM can help in delivering customer delight:
CCM can send notifications through multiple channels such as SMS, email, WhatsApp, push notifications, or through social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. These channels can be decided by building intelligent rules based on a customer’s preferences, demographics, or channel usage.
- Links to Access/Download Documents
It would save a considerable amount of time if people could access relevant documents along with the concerned notification. Consider a customer receiving a notification about his account statement. A link can be shared through SMS or WhatsApp which opens the statement in a responsive HTML format right on his phone screen, and further gives the option to download a PDF version. He no longer needs to go to the website or mobile app, thereby saving time and creating a wonderful experience.
- Enclosed Media with Notifications
CCM allows you to send images and documents along with app notifications, turning a mundane message into an attractive one. It provides the perfect opportunity for up-selling or cross-selling products and can inform customers about any ongoing offers and promotions.
CCM suite enables businesses to track each communication sent to consumers on multiple channels. It also analyzes consumer action by monitoring open rates, click-through rates, and bounce rates across multiple channels. This enables businesses to get a 360-degree view of all the notifications sent from different departments and their respective responses received from the customers.
It is important to treat these notifications as an opportunity to establish a personalized and long-lasting relationship with your customer. An effective CCM suite can go a long way in enhancing your brand image and delivering a superior customer experience.
Source: https://newgensoft.com/blog/add-spark-to-your-customer-notifications-with-a-modern-ccm/
by EDMS Consultants Sdn Bhd | Nov 25, 2020 | Digital transformation, information management, M-Files, Uncategorized, work remotely
It’s no secret that remote work or telecommuting was gaining popularity in the United States over the past decade. According to one recent study, about 4.3 million people work remotely at least half the time — a number equivalent to about 3.2% of the entire workforce. All told, the number of people who work from home in some capacity has increased by an impressive 140% since 2005 alone — a trend that showed absolutely no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
Based on all of the above, it’s safe to say that it was already established that remote work played an important role in the future of business. Few people probably realized that “the future” would arrive quite as quickly as it did.
At one point during the Coronavirus pandemic, more people were in lockdown in the United States than were alive during World War II. Many employees were working remotely for the first time and countless organizations had to find ways to adapt to the brave new world we found ourselves in.
These same organizations are now trying to figure out the best strategy to accommodate these newly remote, flexible workers. Believe it or not, the most important component of that strategy is still the one that far too many people are overlooking.
There are a number of important components that are necessary to make any remote employee strategy truly work. Obviously, you need video conferencing and chat tools so that people can communicate and collaborate with one another. These workers need not only reliable Internet connections of their own, but a secure way to access a business’ network so that they can continue to share data and be as productive as possible.
But while these elements are important… they’re not the most important component that should be at the heart of your strategy.
By far, the number one most important part of any successful remote, flexible work strategy has to do with a true information platform at the heart of it all. At its core, an information management system is exactly what it sounds like — a solution designed to enable not only the storage of critical data, but also the organization and retrieval of that same information.
Think about it like this. Your average business is creating an enormous amount of data on a daily basis pertaining to not only the work of its employees but also its products, its services and its customers. But without a way to share that information and make it easy for anyone to access from anywhere, the actionable intelligence and insight it contains remains trapped inside. At that point, the data is essentially meaningless — it’s little more than a bunch of 1s and 0s sitting on a hard drive somewhere.
During a period where more people are working remotely than ever, the problem of information sprawl actually gets worse, not better. Data is being created from so many difference sources that are essentially siloed off from one another that communication, collaboration AND productivity are harmed in ways that you simply cannot afford.
By having the right information management software at the heart of your remote, flexible work strategy, on the other hand, you accomplish a number of important goals — essentially all at the exact same time.
- Give your employees a solution that gives them anywhere, anytime access to all of the critical data they need to do their jobs in the most effective way possible.
- You also have an overarching strategy that applies not just to the sharing of information, but that also works in accordance with all of the principles of governance, compliance and security.
So, you’re not just providing your employees access to the tools necessary to do their jobs. You’re doing so in a way that gives you better visibility into who is accessing what information and from where, which ensures compliance with rules and regulations you must adhere to. You’re also adding yet another layer of security, thus protecting your employees, your customers and the very business you’ve already worked so hard to build.
But the major reason why this is so important right now is that sooner rather than later, COVID-19 will be officially behind us. However, the businesses that we’re about to return to will likely barely resemble the ones we left in mid-March. Remote, flexible work is absolutely here to stay and by putting this critical component in place as an organic part of your remote, flexible work strategy today, you’ll be able to reap benefits that will continue to pay dividends long after COVID-19 is finally gone.
If you’d like to find out more about why an information management solution is the number one most important part of any remote, flexible work strategy, or if you just have any additional questions you’d like to discuss with someone in a bit more detail, we’re here to be a resource for you and your team.
Source: https://www.m-files.com/blog/the-1-most-important-facet-of-your-remote-flexible-work-strategy/
by EDMS Consultants Sdn Bhd | Nov 20, 2020 | Digital transformation, M-Files, Uncategorized, Work from home, work remotely
According to figures, before COVID, only 7% of workers in the U.S. had access to a “flexible workplace” benefit or telework. Now, 64% of US employees are working from home now, according to research conducted by SHRM’s COVID-19 Business Index.
This swelling of remote work is spurring many organizations to reevaluate their suite of business applications and tech solutions. In a TechRepublic article this year, Mike Vance, VP of IT at KSM Consulting says:
“It means evaluating what systems you have and how you can potentially migrate to the cloud, even in this [remote] environment. Your IT professionals still have the access that they need to do that work. Streamlining their tech stack is also aligned with what your core business function is, the systems that support that, and ensuring they are resilient and ready to function as they need it to.”
Vance continues to lay out a simple process for IT organizations to right-size their tech stacks in these strange and unprecedented times — a process certainly worth recapping.
Step 1: Conduct an Audit of Your Tech Stack
The first suggestion and natural starting point is to assess which constituents of your tech stack are actually needed. Vance suggests deploying employee surveys to assess which solutions are most useful and most utilized.
“I’d be doing them probably the first couple of weeks… I would analyze the results, figure out what you need to dive into deeper to make sure they’re fully productive. Then move that to biweekly for a month and then monthly until we get out of this window,” Vance says. “You could uncover a lot of things in regard to preparedness in organizations that they didn’t know before.”
Step 2: Develop a Feasibility Matrix
The next step is to collect qualitative data from the IT staff and use that data to put together a feasibility matrix — which analyzes responses from the employee surveys to determine which tech solutions are critical. From there, define which of those are feasible to continue using in a remote work environment.
Again, Vance guides us to the most critical consideration in assessing software solutions in a remote work environment:
What is the feasibility and how does it balance with the ROI of that solution?
In other words… “What’s the return I get out of making this investment during this time? How hard is it to get it? Is it even feasible to have this while being remote?”
Vance goes on to highlight the importance of collaboration and communication solutions to a remote work tech stack, while balancing them with diligent information security practices to minimize the risk brought on by remote work.
Step 3: Eliminate Redundant, Unnecessary Applications and SaaS Licenses
An organization’s tech stack is an ever-evolving organism. Many organizations keep adding to their suite of tech solutions — which naturally means a bloating of data stores and information repositories. It also means that there are SaaS solutions that aren’t being used much anymore and licenses which can be cut from the budget.
With an audit and resulting feasibility matrix in tow, IT departments can start to execute on that information and retool their tech stacks, trimming the applications that are unnecessary and cutting down on redundant SaaS licenses.
As mentioned a moment ago, as the tech stack grows, so too does the amount of information, data, files and documents that are a natural by-product of doing business. Not only does the amount of information grow, usually the number of repositories grows, as well.
Think about it. If an organization standardizes and adds a communication tool, a collaboration tool, and a project management tool, for example, that’s three more silos where information will be housed.
To combat this information sprawl, organizations should consider an intelligent information management platform like M-Files. With M-Files, information and files can live wherever they need to live. M-Files connects to existing repositories, presenting information to users based on what it is, not where it is. It allows users to perform Google-like searches for critical information across the entire information ecosystem.
M-Files also helps enforce companywide information security and governance protocols, even in a remote work environment. By layering M-Files as an umbrella over the entire tech stack, compliance is preserved, and only authorized personnel have access to sensitive information.
Ultimately, intelligent information management underpins the enterprise tech stack and can be scaled along with it as companies right-size that tech stack.
Source: https://www.m-files.com/blog/3-steps-to-right-sizing-your-tech-stack-in-the-new-normal-of-remote-work/
by EDMS Consultants Sdn Bhd | Nov 19, 2020 | Newgen, Uncategorized, work life management, work remotely
5 Tips for Maintaining Work-life Balance
We now have worked from home for months, with varying degrees of freedom to move around. Depending on which country you are based in, you may be totally confined to your home complex or are able to run your errands in the city. During this time, the world has experienced some more things,
- Many more COVID-19 infected people, some even in our known circle
- Many losing their jobs or having reduced incomes
- Economy taking a hit, as people are spending money on essentials only
- On the work front, a lot more time being spent in front of laptops and mobile devices
All these changes can bring more stress to our lives. Negative energies of these financial, emotional, and work pressures can impact your health. We need a balance in our existence to survive and thrive. Here are five quick tips for maintaining this balance,
- Exercise more – Start your day with some physical exercises, yoga, and meditation. The combination can be very peaceful and calming for your being
- Shorter meetings – Set 15-minute or 45-minute meetings instead of 30- and 60-minute ones. A lot of times, the meeting only requires that much productive time
- Frequent breaks – Take frequent breaks. Do not be shy to take 10 minutes here and there to look away from the screen, spend time with the family, or just stretch
- More video calls – Video calls will bring additional dimensions of a conversation, which makes meetings more dynamic and enjoyable
- More ad hoc calls – Do not let your calendar drive your day. Allow for ad hoc calls with your colleagues to mimic hallway chats or water cooler gossips
The idea is to pace ourselves, before these long hours start creating fatigue. Set an end time for your day. Unless something is urgent, close your laptop at that time, after which it is your family and/or me time. More importantly, use your weekends to revitalize for following weeks. The COVID situation can last for months. In this digitally connected new world, we owe it to ourselves and our employers that we stay healthy both physically and emotionally by maintaining a work-life balance in our lives. Maintain social distance, stay safe, and stay healthy.
Source: https://newgensoft.com/blog/7-quick-tips-to-make-work-from-home-more-productive/
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