Why are we ignoring the cheapest and most powerful tool in the record keeping by stealth arsenal?

This post is really about asking for help resolving a conundrum that I’ve been wrestling with recently.

I have significant belief in workflow.

Simply put, I think it’s the simplest, cheapest (because almost everyone owns it already) and most powerful tool for record keeping by stealth.

I believe this because I think that the route to failure in record keeping is to try and get everyone to come to a records management system.

To me, the real challenge of records is “how to put record keeping in the critical path”.

This is something that workflow does amazingly well.

Create a workflow, make it the “how” work gets delivered and done, and people will come to it because it’s now in the critical path and “how we do things here”.

I’ve come to the conclusion that my reasoning here must be flawed. I’d estimate that about 1 in 10 organisations that I talk to who own workflow actually use it.

So what am I missing? Why isn’t it being used?

If you are one of the rare organisations using it, if you’re adding more workflows all the time, and you’ve got great penetration and buy in, I’d love to know how you got there, and understand what you learned along the way. I’m sure everyone else would love to know too.