The theme couldn’t have been more fitting for the 2024 IRMS Conference – “Tides of Change – Surviving and Thriving in a Sea of Information”.  

Amongst all The Who and ABBA references and bookends of sunshine, the event was full of fantastic sessions and discussions, many of which focused on building strong enterprise information management foundations. This got me thinking about the Bob Dylan quote: 

“May you have a strong foundation when the winds of change shift…” 

My takeaway from Brighton was that this shift is happening right now and there has never been a more exciting (and challenging) time to be working in information management services. 

The rise of enterprise information management

But why? Well… Enterprise information management has made a triumphant return to the spotlight, reclaiming its status as a pivotal and exciting field that we always knew it was! A key reason for this is that the focus has shifted to creating a strong understanding of your information and everything that goes with it, or as Kathryn Brooks, Clare Paterson and Luke Beckley so astutely put it in their session, creating a “Data Posture”.  

Another key discussion point centred around the AI imperative and the role of information management in supporting the responsible, compliant and successful adoption of AI. To fuel these concepts and programmes, building a blueprint of your information is arguably the most important element. Without an accurate and comprehensive info management system, AI initiatives risk being built on unstable ground.

AI, compliance and the expanding information landscape

A recurring theme at the conference was how information is becoming increasingly decentralised. With data spreading across countless applicationsm the ability to control, govern, and optimise information has become a boardroom priority.

Every organisation knows they have a sea of information, but much of it is hidden in siloes of unstructured data. The requirement to control this data will only grow as information spreads to all corners of all applications, and it is now becoming a focus point for senior leaders to build a strong enterprise information management foundation. 

The great aspect of being a sponsor wasn’t that we won the Vendor Showcase for the second year running but that we were able to speak with new individuals who are looking to address a diverse set of information management and governance challenges that are being accelerated by new initiatives, such as AI adoption and digital sustainability/ESG: 

  • Federated, compliant retention management 
  • Understanding of personal data footprint  
  • eDiscovery efficiency 
  • Compliant AI adoption 
  • Data cleansing and storage reduction 
  • The emergence of structured data into records management 
  • Lean data strategies for digital sustainability 
  • Entity extraction from content 

In our conversations, all roads led to one common barrier: lack of data understanding. Too many organisations struggle to answer four fundamental questions: 

  1. What information do I have? 
  1. Where is it? 
  1. What is its context? 
  1. What is its business value? 

Answering these four questions is paramount in attacking the use cases and challenges of today, as well as preparing for the ones of tomorrow. You can’t build a great building without a solid information management system (IMS) and quality foundations, and this is especially true when it comes to building a foundation of good quality data.  

Building strong foundations for the future

At EncompaaS, our intelligent information management platform uses next-generation AI technologies to find, enrich, organise and de-risk structured, unstructured and semi-structured at scale anywhere in the organisation with speed and accuracy for enhanced business results. By automating governance and data quality management, our platform creates a normalised foundation of high-quality data, enabling organisations to rapidly mitigate compliance and privacy risks, while unlocking the full potential of their information assets.  

With the Global Datasphere expected to reach 394 zettabytes by 2028, data control, quality and governance is going to be at the forefront of executives’ priorities more than ever.   

That is why organisations must adopt enterprise information management software that automates their information management practices to not only meet this challenge at scale but survive and thrive in a sea of information.  

The changes in the market in recent years are quite mind blowing and it’s important that we all continue to collaborate and share ideas as we move into 2025.