Month: April 2021

How fast does your organisation want to go?

While we have to ensure representational accuracy of our records, quality to me has only one useful, influencable measure – how fast can we access and act on the informational content of the records we hold?

The simplest example of changes in quality are those that come from changes in medium – paper documents to electronic documents, electronic documents to digital data.

Each one of them raises the quality of the information.

Each one of them raises the speed with which our organisations can move. Each one reduces the resources our organisation has to expend to do so.

If we want records management to be the way our organisation goes faster, this is the conversation that we have to lead.

Or it will be someone else.

Find a problem.

Define what it looks like when it’s fixed with records management practice.

Define what the gap is costing the organisation in very specific dollar amounts – additional hours worked by people vs. their salaries, direct costs in unrealised but specifically quantifiable gains.

Implement the change.

Do a benefits realisation exercise to prove that your theory produced the return you thought it was going to.

Present the benefits realisation output to your management or executive team.

Repeat until your records management team has run out of ways to improve the performance of your organisation.