Information transformation… out with old, in with the new?

“Digital Transformation… Digital Transformation… Digital Transformation…”

Have you ever heard that term…? Talk about the buzz phrase of the industry, an umbrella term with so many nuances that just make it so difficult to start a constructive conversation… We’ve all been guilty of it!

Anyway… Can I tell you how I can help you along your digital transformation journey?

Being part of the content services, information management and governance community, I come across many clients/connections/prospects managing the challenge of balancing old with new, decommissioning the old, or giving the old a makeover. Essentially they’re trying to transform…digitally.

But sometimes old can be cool? Music, clothing, films, content repositories… It’s a big decision to turn your back on a parka coat when you might need it at some point in the future or get rid of it before you see Liam Gallagher at Knebworth. You have to be sure that when you replace it, you’ve got something ready to transition over to. Even cassettes are back in fashion now!

The challenge many of my clients face is the ever-accelerating growth of a demanding client base and requirements to change to align with that demand, especially driven by you know what over the last few years. Partner this with a bunch of legacy platforms, full of information related to your client base that already have complex integrations, but now need to communicate with many newer age technologies that need access to that key information. I wasn’t planning on getting into the governance of all of that content flying between applications in this blog, but bear that in mind too.

Before making any decisions on what goes and stays, both from an information and platform perspective, you first need to understand what you have and where it is – only then can you really make a decision on what goes in the rubbish bin (securely). With knowledge being key, having a holistic visualisation of all of your information sources before making important, strategic decisions is paramount and by having all of this intel in the same place, you no longer have to be afraid of the dark… data.

Know what is stored and understand your information value and risk together, showing your SharePoint Online footprint and Teams information alongside your legacy content and network drives. By doing this in an automated way and without user input takes away a lot of discovery and operational costs and by having content policies and classification in place centrally, you are then able to report back to the business findings and strategy to help with compliance and governance, whether it be regulatory or internally driven. Not to mention peace of mind in knowing that you can centralise policy management from one screen, whilst keeping the content in place, taking away change management from end users and increasing productivity.

This is exactly how we partner with our clients at EncompaaS, helping to automate and operationalise information management strategies from a knowledge of your surroundings. When it comes to an “out with the old, in with the new” approach, we are able to give our clients the information they need to be able to pull the trigger on the right decision at the right time and have the evidence to back it up. We do this with two key ingredients – a disruptive SaaS compliance platform to represent a holistic, centralised view of information, paired with a team of experts working alongside you who can help prioritise your greatest risks, with actions that minimise business disruption. Simply by seeing our platform in action, you can immediately identify how light can be shone on some difficult challenges you no doubt face as a business and begin to create the marginal gains that will have a huge impact on downstream processes and projects.

Reach out to me if you would like to know more – I’ll be at IRMS in November in Birmingham manning the EncompaaS stand and I’m happy to discuss this in more detail at any time!

So what about Digital Transformation (I hear you ask)?… Perhaps in this case we can call it Information Transformation!