Microsoft

While traveling to and from the American Records Management Association (ARMA) annual conference in Nashville two weeks ago, I read an interesting and entertaining book. Written in 2015, Rejection Proof is about overcoming rejection in the business world.

For information management, AI is not a buzzword or a trendy topic. It’s a real technology with a real purpose. AI is the key technology foundation enabling users to manage their data at scale, take their data farther, and make it more dimensional than ever before.

The pandemic changed a lot of things; most notably how people worked alone AND together outside the office. Without an office to go to during lockdown meant that we learned how to recreate at home our work-based creature comforts – free coffee, office supplies and a cafeteria. Another office creature comfort for which we had to figure out workarounds during COVID centered on the file cabinet, desk drawer or remote warehouses to access physical records.

Having the ability to understand where data is being created, by who and for what purpose is a critical first step in being able to address privacy requirements.

There has been much written on how all of us have had to modify our working habits as a result Covid. The pandemic was an accelerant to change; but it was not the reason why employees began to embrace collaboration tools such as Teams to do their most important work.

A client said to me this week that a lot of their time in early 2020 was spent emptying the shelves of laptops in a well-known high street computer retailer to enable their staff to work from home. I shuddered at the challenges the business will have faced to ensure everyone was secure and compliant in such an outlier of a time. However, it seems like we’re all running towards the final hurdle now, although from the conversations I’m having with organisations there is a huge lean towards a hybrid workforce from now on, which will bring its own challenges around information explosion.

The requirement to operate digital systems is causing some real tension when moving through procurement processes, particularly for Public Sector, Financial Services and other regulated sectors…how does your App meet risk, compliance and governance responsibilities of the organisation?