“Heroism is latent in every human soul - However humble or unknown, they (the veterans) have renounced what are accounted pleasures and cheerfully undertaken all the self-denials - privations, toils, dangers, sufferings, sicknesses, mutilations, life"  (Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain)

Brett Tarr, General Counsel with eMag Solutions, is an attorney with broad experience in litigation and electronic discovery, having spent several years at a prestigious national law firm.  Additionally, he has served as Head of Marketing and Operations for several mid-sized corporations, building both traditional and Internet-based marketing campaigns.  Brett holds a Law Degree in litigation and intellectual property as well as an MBA in Marketing and Management.

All too often, businesses discover the need for a document retention policy either when it is least convenient to implement or too late in the game.  Particularly in today’s litigious environment where virtually any form of information (paper, electronic, or audio) can be used in litigation, being proactive in this regard can save an organization from headaches and excessive costs.  An organizational retention policy provides for the systematic review, retention and destruction of information and records received or created in the course of business.   Below are 8 items to consider when developing your company’s retention policy.

8 Things to Consider when Developing an Information Retention Policy

1 -- Understand the need for a formalized retention policy.  

Having a retention policy in place is about more than just making space and keeping clutter-free; it can be a great asset should litigation arise.  The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) state that parties are to discuss preservation at the “meet and confer," but in practice, preservation decisions should be made long before.  Proactive policies establish that good faith efforts have been made by your business and help facilitate the entire litigation process 

2 -- Do you know what is “Reasonably Accessible” under the updated Federal Rules?  

FRCP 26(b)(2) delineates the standard for discovery of electronically stored information based on the concept of “Reasonably Accessible," with a two-pronged test for “Undue burden” or “Undue cost." Developing a good retention policy puts your company in control of which elements of information are available and discoverable under the new Federal Rules.

3 -- Identify which types of records should be reflected in your retention policy.  

Just saying “save it all” won’t work; you need to specify.  Successful retention policies will target the following types of information and records: Employment, Account and Corporate Tax Records, Legal Records, Electronically stored information (computer disks, hard drives, emails, web content, audio files/voicemail, information on thumb-drives/PDA’s/digital devices).  You will also need to take into account if your organization’s line of business and any specialty information that may be unique to this sector.

4 -- Make sure to ask yourself all the key questions.

• Does your retention policy reflect obligations imposed by all local, state and federal regulations?
• Has your company previously had to produce information for litigation discovery? 
• Does your company have adequate means for ensuring that information is not improperly destroyed?
• Is there adequate guidance for what information must be preserved?
• Have you accounted for replication and storage of paper documents? 
• Have you properly addressed email policies?

5 -- A company’s retention policy is only as effective as its implementation.  

It must receive buy-in starting at the top level of management and then be filtered down throughout the organization.  Policies should be easy to follow and should include periodic audits.  Your organization should renew these policies every few years, to allow for adjustments in company operations and changes in technology.  It is also important that your policy is flexible, including allowances for suspension of the policy when a litigation hold is in place.

6.  Regular enforcement is key.  

Retention policies must be regularly enforced even when no litigation or investigation is looming.  Sporadic enforcement may be viewed as strategic bad faith destruction, rather than information management occurring in the ordinary course of business.  This may result in organizational liability.  You should perform regular, scheduled checks to ensure that employee practices of destruction and retention consistently conform to the plan.  One employee’s carelessness can open up the entire organization’s information for discovery.

7 -- A properly executed retention policy can serve as a roadmap.  

It will be a helpful tool to prepare for litigation, providing both in-house and outside counsel with a roadmap for finding information in case of internal investigations, disaster recovery, regulatory requests, or litigation. If your company is to develop a functional retention policy, then it must know where all of its information is kept and how that information is stored, including names of custodians and types of servers and backup tapes used.

8.  Take stock of your backup tapes, i.e. practice Intelligent Asset Management (IAM).  

You need to determine what tapes are necessary for continued archiving.  If your company has created a compliant records retention policy, then generally there would be no need to keep tapes that fall outside of the retention requirements.  In some cases, you may have to adjust retention policies to avoid archiving tapes that are not needed and serve no useful purpose.  Identify and preserve backup tapes that are consistent with current preservation requirements and litigation holds.  Your retention policies should explicitly spell out how backup tapes are handled.  Interrogate and adopt the management of your tape media catalogs – manage your tapes and know where they all reside. 

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The policy your company creates should identify those records that need to be maintained and contain guidelines for how long certain information should be kept and how they should be destroyed.  By following these 8 steps, one can work to ensure that nothing gets left in the cold.

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Have you downloaded our free e-book yet?  Get your copy of 8 reasons you need a strategy for managing information now.  Our maybe an audiobook version for listening in the car or on the treadmill?  Click HERE.

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These posts may also be of interest:

Since joining Vamosa in 2001, Nic has helped transform the company into a sector-defining software and solutions company specializing in the emerging area of Enterprise Content Governance (ECoG). Nic has led the expansion of Vamosa in the US, while continuing to work closely with the UK team on Vamosa's strategy and vision for the recently launched suite of products.

8 things that always worried you about legacy content, but you were afraid to ask about

1 -- Your content is probably not in the best shape.  

One of the reasons why you are implementing your new ECM system is that you want your content to be better managed than it has been up until now! You will need some "tough love!" – you have to lay down the law.  "Governance" is the watchword and it calls for the 4 Cs of content governance –content needs to be clean, it needs to be classified, it needs to be correct and it needs to be credible.

2 -- You probably have a lot more content than you need. 

Most legacy content stores are littered with duplicate content; with content that is no longer relevant to your business or contributing to the cause.  But how do you work out what’s "correct" and what isn’t?  You need to do content discovery to identify duplicates (and near duplicates, or versions) of web pages, Office documents, PDFs and images. You then need to establish what stays and what goes. This act alone can reduce your content volumes by 40%-60%.  The benefits are significant costs savings and collapsed project timescales.

3 -- No matter how shiny your new CMS is, your content can trash it.  

Your favorite systems integrator -- or maybe your best project team -- have been tasked with building this crystal cathedral to corporate content.  Look at the project plans: where is the work plan to find out where the legacy content is hiding, what it consists of and who is using it?  More often than not it is pretty far down the priority list -- many times it is an afterthought.  Some pretty huge ECM implementations have looked great on paper, but have failed to deliver because they have overlooked  the content they have to manage.

4 -- Your content authors are human – and it shows! 

The actual content may range in quality from A+ to an F.  Plotted on a graph showing the content’s quality score against corporate, technical and compliance criteria your legacy content might be lucky to get a C+. But that is worrying:  if your content gets a pass, but only just, how prepared would you be for a real "content crisis?"  If you were hit by litigation, a product recall, or a corporate scandal, would your content hold up to scrutiny?

At times like these you will wish you had implemented the content governance model you just didn’t have time for in the project plan.  Failing to cover content compliance (an establishing policy if you don’t have one) when looking at your legacy content is simply replicating your existing problems in your new system.

5 -- We can do this the hard way or the easy way. 

Do you really know what you actually have out there?  What is published, what is stored, and what is "invisible" because it can’t be found using the search engine?  Similarly, how can you find out what is published and what is also being used, as opposed to just sitting there burning fossil fuels?   Do you know what your existing metadata implementation covers (and more importantly what it doesn’t)?  

Short answer:  you really need to carry out a thorough and in-depth analysis of it all - content, storage, logs, metadata, information architecture, links – the whole nine yards.  You can’t measure what you don’t know.

6 -- Where are the tactics and what is the strategy? 

This is where it can get really interesting.  If your IT or project guy comes to you and says "I know how to get this content into the new system – I want to build/buy a content migration tool," then you should start to prepare for that sinking feeling.  Migration should be seen as being part of the governance thought process, not an excuse to acquire a "tool" to take content from one place and put it somewhere else.  "Lift and shift" is the fastest route to replicating your current bad habits in your new system.  Legacy content has to have new life breathed into it, and it has to be crafted to maximize the benefits afforded by the new system.  Otherwise it’s back to business as usual, and in another two years time you will be looking to move your content again.

7 -- Don’t let the tail wag the dog - your legacy content can give you a great deal of insight into best practice.  

In many instances, the old system can expose what you did right, and what you did wrong.  Don’t rely on default values for your system configuration.  Default values may be the easiest choice, but they can be storing up a whole heap of pain for the future.  For example, it may seem very reasonable  that your new ECM has a default value of 60 characters for the content description metatag. But will that suit you? What if half of your existing content has a description field greater than that?  Do you truncate? Do you break the description at the complete whole word before you hit the maiximum? Do you ask your content owners what they want to do?  

The answer is a quite simple “No” to the above – you need to use ALL of these values at a level that suits your needs.  Sounds obvious?  You would be amazed at the number of international companies that get caught out by simple concepts such as this.

8 -- You may have got away with it up until now, but that was probably just dumb luck!  

Your public-facing content is your shop window to the world – the WHOLE world. You control it (you hope) and you have total responsibility for what it says – in good times and in bad.  Your web sites and all of your documents are indexed and maintained for internal use – but when the lawyers call, you want to be prepared.  Under the federal rules of civil procedure (FRCP), the discovery process is there to ensure that the parties are not subject to surprises.  What is actually sitting inside your legacy content could be a ticking time bomb.  So try to eliminate the surprises by ensuring that this legacy content gets transformed in such a way as to make you litigation-ready, and (hopefully) there won’t be any surprises!

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The following ECM implementation-related topics may also be of interest...

1. 8 things you need to know about content classification and ECM  
2. 8 ways to increase user adoption in an ECM project  
3. 8 things to look for in a document management service provider 
4. 8 ways to reduce your storage and bandwidth costs for document imaging solutions  
5. 8 things to consider when looking for ECM consultants  
6. 8 Steps to Avoid Process and Organizational Problems when Implementing an ECM System
   
7. 8 things to remember when managing ECM applications

What do you scan? 

Which processes work best? 

Outsourced vs centralized vs distributed? 

We need your input. The resulting Industry Watch report will be free for participants to download. You could also win a cool Samsung N130 netbook. Here's the link -- http://www.aiimhost.com/survey

Take the survey now.

Have you downloaded the other AIIM surveys?  They're free.  That's right, free.  Download them HERE.

Buying software and hardware to enable and in-house Document Management application for data extraction and forms processing versus outsourcing the application should come down to a solid business case that includes quantitative analysis in the form of a cost benefit analysis if outsourcing, or ROI if buying a premise solution using an NPV or IRR formula as part of the equation.  

However, often times it comes down to the company philosophy of building versus renting.   The renting companies believe in focusing on their core competency and reducing cost while outsourcing all non- core functions.  The building companies often are more focused on maintaining control.  The following should be considered in terms of answering the in-house vs. outsourcing question for your organization.

8 things to consider when deciding to buy or rent OCR capabilities (i.e., should you bring the software and hardware in-house or work with a service bureau?)

1 -- Inbound forms- Are your forms paper or digital? 

If paper, they need to be digitized by using a fax service (instead of fax machines) or use scanners to digitize the paper so that they can be entered into a digital workflow to begin the data extraction process.   

2 -- If the images are skewed or of poor quality, they will need to be enhanced with image enhancement software.  

OCR software does not read poor image quality or low dpi images very well; the image will need to be enhanced for an accurate read, so this requires another software package.  

3 -- What kinds of forms are being received?  Structured or unstructured?  

Structured forms have fields found in the same place on every form like a loan form.    Or they may very like in purchase orders or invoices which are examples of unstructured forms.   Some OCR software platforms alone are not very accurate with unstructured forms.  Although software vendors will claim otherwise, will the software vendor give a guarantee for the accuracy claims?  Another important question is how you will handle false positives?  A false positive is when the OCR software recognizes the 7 as a 1 or a 3 as an 8.  

4 -- What accuracy rate is required to guarantee a reduction in FTEs for the data entry task?

This is an important component of your business case.  In other words, labor can be both a fixed and a variable cost.  How will this apply to your data entry operations scheduling?  If your accuracy rate with OCR software is mid 80s, will this justify a reduction in FTEs?  

5 -- What is the lifespan of the hardware and software before it is obsolescent for your IRR formula?

Software and hardware depreciate much faster than other equipment and must be accounted for in the ROI formula.  We believe the software life cycle can be as short as 6 months is a maximum of 18 months for OCR software.  Remember Moore’s law for the hardware.  Consider the time of implementation, training and depreciation in deciding whether an in-house solution is really the best choice.

6 -- How will the OCR software interface with your document management package or Image archiving solution and is work flow required?   

What is the capital expenditure for archiving hardware and software?  We have found that many legacy ERP systems using an AS400 cannot accept a file upload.  

7 -- It is important to consider your overall requirements and cost.

What is the annual cost for hardware, software, training, maintenance, IT support and implementation for an in-house OCR solution versus the transactional cost of using an OCR Service?  How much will the learning curve cost?  What is the cost of implementation delays?   

8 -- When considering the capital expenditures equation, is risk part of your discount factor for the NPV equation for an on-premises solution?  

We have many customers that were obtained after an their internal OCR Document Management project failed.  A service offers a guarantees in the form of service level agreements.  Equipment and software can always be purchased.  

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For niche applications like an OCR document management for automated data entry, one must consider both the hard cost and soft cost of processing paper when evaluating against the cost of maintaining the status quo.  Depending on the application, the soft cost often adds up to more than the hard cost.  For example, consider the cost of mistakes caused by data entry errors.  These costs should include, rekeying cost, stocking, shipping and customer service.   

With today’s movement toward SaaS and cloud computing, I believe the argument becomes even stronger toward outsourcing a niche application like a Document Management for data extraction using an OCR platform.  

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Some recent posts on imaging/scanning that may be of interest:

• 8 things I learned about OCR from small and mid-sized organizations 
• 8 ways to reduce your storage and bandwidth costs for document imaging solutions  
  
• 8 things to consider in selecting the right scanner  
  

In other words, you can automate all you want, but if there is piece of the process that doesn't work, it will drag the best of intentions and the best of automation to a grinding halt. 

A case in point.

First, I will admit some ownership to the problem here by my/our procrastination.

That said, some background. My daughter Erin is in middle of the college application process.  A couple of the schools she is applying to have November 1 deadlines for Early Action.  One of the schools, much to our surprise, had a November 1 deadline not just for the application, but for all the items in the application "folder," including SAT scores.

I was pretty amazed at the automation of the SAT enrollment process and grading process during the applications for Erin's older brothers.  So I imagined that the easiest part of meeting our November 1 deadline would be having Erin's scores sent off to her schools.  I should note that she did not list any schools on the distribution list for the scores when she took them (an oversight).

Not so fast, document management poo-bah.

For reasons that are still unclear to me, when you request scores, here's what to expect... "About four weeks after we receive your request, we will send a cumulative report of all SAT and SAT Subject Test scores that are available and reportable to the colleges and programs you have noted..."  

4 weeks? We have electronic information. Being sent electronically to recipients. Being requested via electronic means.  And it requires 4 weeks of processing time?  Longer than it took to grade the test in the first place.  Hmmm....

Like I said, an electronic process is only as strong as its weakest link.

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Perhaps of interest....

51 Fast Facts for Presentations

Information on AIIM Training 

You can download an audiobook from iTunes.

If you are a supercool iPhone person, you can download directly to your iPhone and view it there by looking at the Stanza app, checking the Smashwords collection, and searching on author Mancini.

If you want to check out a PowerPoint summary, go HERE.

Want a list of what's in the first book, go HERE. 

Want to be part of the next e-book?  Click HERE.

First, if you haven't taken our annual state of the document channel survey, the deadline is this Friday.  Go to THIS LINK to take the survey.  If you have any problem with the link, paste the following directly into your browser...

http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB229RBARQEWW

Second, have you registered yet for the industry's premier document channel event?  

The AIIM Document Management Service Providers Executive Forum is NEXT WEEK in Scottsdale.

Get your registration in today.

Do you have a copy of our e-book?  No charge, no registration.  

8 reasons you need a strategy for managing information -- before it's too late.

Before getting started with an implementation -- before even moving into the 8 secrets -- it is useful to begin by recalling why you are even considering this in the first place and by confirming there is a commitment to proceed.

This kind of  "strategic mobilization" should kick off any ECM or ERM project.  To do this effectively, organizations should gather sponsors and stakeholders, identify the team that will lead the project, understand what the vision of the sponsor of the project is, and understand where significant gaps are likely to arise.

At its core, this is about defining 1) who needs to be involved, and 2) the scope of the project.  Framing the initiative and confirming commitment needs a variety of key stakeholders: business, legal, executive, records, and IT.  And don't forget some representation from the people who will actually have to use all this technology!  In terms of scope, this will need to be done across a number of dimensions, including some or all of the following factors:  1) geography, 2) organizational, 3) legacy content, 4) information types, 5) information classes and 6) timing.

All of this should lead to a charter for the initiative.  I will confess my bias in this area, which will carry over into some of the documentation described in the 8 secrets -- this document is better off being short and strategic and actually read than long and detailed and gathering dust on a shelf (or whatever the equivalent is in digital form).  My friend Martin White from InranetFocus.com has some good advice -- think Magna Carta, not a 100 page document.

Everyone still on board?  Have a charter and sponsorship and commitment?  OK, then, let's get going.  

Here are the 8 secrets.

1 -- Build a Business Strategy and Blueprint.

A successful blueprint begins with identifying the critical success factors for the initiative, how they will be measured, and what the drivers will be (i.e., how will life be different after all this work).  

A good business blueprint includes the following:

An Executive Summary that summarizes the key information contained in the business blueprint, and highlights the recommendations and decision required.  

A High-Level Program Plan that provides a very high level plan showing a sequence of projects and approximate delivery schedule. This will likely include a series of tactical and strategic projects.

A series of Business Case justifications covering the multiple dimensions of any ECM or ERM project:

• The strategic case shows why the ECM-related project is required, and what business needs the project satisfies.   
• The economic case contains the summary of costs and benefits.  The economic case focuses on comparing alternative ways of implementing the ECM-related project.
• The funding case confirms that the available sources of funding are sufficient to implement the ECM environment and operate the ECM service.
• The commercial case describes plans for the procurement of any ECM services or technology from suppliers.  
• The project management case describes the governance arrangement for the project and details of the project team.  

A Future-State Conceptual Architecture illustrates the gap between the initial Current-State Conceptual Architecture, and what is proposed as the conceptual components of the solution to solve the concerns of the business.

2 -- Conduct a Technology Assessment and Create a Blueprint.

As its name implies, the technology assessment concentrates on the technical aspects of your strategy. The goal of the assessment is to develop a technology blueprint similar in scope to the business blueprint defined in Secret #1, but focused on technology. 

There are 5 main stages in producing an effective set of technical requirements for an ECM or ERM related initiative:

The first stage is to plan the work effort that is required to develop the technical requirements and blueprint.  Sufficient time should be allowed to obtain consensus and agreement; this can often be considerable and often takes longer than those closest to the project anticipate.

The second stage is to gather requirements.  This will involve obtaining needs from the key stakeholders and users.  

The third step, after having gathered an initial set of requirements, is to analyze and understand the requirements.  

The fourth stage is the documentation of the requirements.  Documentation of the requirements is a powerful tool to achieving consensus on the end-state solution.

The fifth and final stage is to obtain agreement to the documented set of requirements.  This will involve obtaining some kind of sign-off authority from each of the key stakeholders.  [Again, recall the earlier advice -- volume doesn't score extra points!]

3 -- Think Through a Governance Structure and Approach.

Information governance is a set of formal and documented policies, procedures and rules that control how enterprise content will be managed potentially across its entire lifecycle, from the point of creation to ultimate destruction. Defining expectations, building a system that supports and enforces these expectations, and defining the role that end users have relative to those expectations is critical to an effective governance structure. 

A sound Information Governance Framework will include the following:

• Laying down policies that will govern behaviors.
• Defining processes for all stages of the Information Lifecycle.
• Setting standards that must be followed when carrying out a defined process.
• Appointing specific people to be responsible for the information assets.
• Providing tools and technology to enable staff to carry out the defined processes to the required standards.
• Auditing the elements of the Framework regularly to ensure that the guidelines are being followed.

Again, it is important that all of this be incorporated into a governance document that is understood, endorsed, and supported by the key stakeholders in the organization.  AIIM research indicates that many of the core problems encountered during an implementation have poor or ill-defined governance at their core.

4 -- Create a Roadmap and Project Plan.

A project plan typically how the following activities will be addressed: 1) Project management, 2) Testing and deployment, and 3 Issue resolution.

We define project management as a structure, process and procedure based on the organization's preferred Project Management methodology.  The role and responsibility of the Project Manager is to make decisions and balance resources across the entire program, and to make sure that all projects are working to a set of shared requirements. The project manager monitors plans and progress across all projects in the ECM project, to ensure coherence and integration across the whole program.  

5 -- Build a Sound Foundation.

Organizations need to make sure that the appropriate software development environment exists for the project.  Some of the questions to ask:  1) Is the configuration management environment set up, so that code and other artifacts can be checked in when they are completed? 2) Do the developers have a workable development environment? 3) Are the developers trained in the tools that will be used to build the system?

Another core foundational requirement is defining the enterprise information architecture. Some of the necessary tasks at this stage are: 1) Defining the enterprise master data model; 2) Defining the master data management architecture; 3) Defining when synchronization of content, data and information are required by different systems to meet their business-based information needs; and 4) Defining the master data definitions and business rules.

Taxonomy design and metadata development are also core elements in building a sound foundation.  [One sentence for these two -- obviously easier said than done!]

6 -- Design the Plan.

The design phase of a project typically includes the following activities:

Design of user support and operational procedures. The user support and operational procedures are intended to create the documentation and training program for all users and technical support staff as the relate to the project. 

Security.  Security design builds in the appropriate content security model, supporting security at each level of the system – whether at the repository, folder/collection, document, element or physical levels.

Design of infrastructure management processes.  Infrastructure management process design provides a set of requirements for the physical implementation of the information platform and its associated management functions.  The target audience for the design documents produced by this activity is operations staff such as Systems Administrators and Systems Operators.

User collaboration.  User content generated through increasingly powerful collaborative tools is a growing challenge in many ECM and ERM environments.  A key element in designing the plan is define how these tools will work in relation to the rest of the ECM environment.

User interfaces.  User interface is specifically focused on the layout, information access and information presentation of the ECM environment.

7 -- Deploy the Plan and Cycle Through Phases of Assessment and Improvement.

Once you get to the point of deploying your solution, there are 4 main phases to consider:  development, testing, actual deployment, and improvement.  These phases typically recur as different versions and levels of functionality are introduced and improved.

Development -- transforms the design into working modules that can be tested. Includes development of operational documentation and training materials.

Testing -- focuses testing of the environment at many levels, from technical functioning (at all) through to testing of end-to-end processes.

Deployment -- delivers the new system into production. Includes setting up production environment, installing the new system applications, interfaces and repositories, publishing the system documentation, training users and initiating production operations.

Operation and continuous improvement -- focused on delivering incremental improvements to existing functionality.

8 -- And Don't Forget Change Management!

AIIM research suggests that the main pitfalls for an ECM project stem not from technology but from a failure to anticipate change management issues.  

Regardless of the kind of change -- whether technological, cultural, procedural, role-based, or any other -- organization must determine whether they are ready to face the change and adjust to it.  Determining readiness is a big factor in the potential success of your ECM project. 

Organizational change is always going to appear threatening to people as it is often linked to job security. Some enterprises freely disseminate information regarding strategy changes.  Other firms are very secretive and feel that this is for senior management only. Practitioners should be as open and honest with staff about change as they possibly can.  Typically, people will more readily embrace the change process if clear information is available.

The readiness of both management and affected workers to accept and adapt to change are the most crucial factors in the success, or failure, of your project.  Management may be far more ready to change than the potentially effected workers, particularly if the idea for the proposed change is coming from management – as it typically is. However, just because you have meetings with middle or senior management who are very enthusiastic about this new project, doesn’t mean that the organization as a whole is ready to change.

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Well, that about does it.  

It can feel daunting, I know, and at this point you may be thinking, do I really want to do this?

Obviously, we feel the answer is yes.  It wasn't easy for organizations to set up strategies and structures to manage money, people, and resources.  But we all did it because these areas were deemed strategically important to organizational success.  

Developing -- and implementing -- an information management strategy is hard work.  But it's not impossible work.

AIIM research, training, publications, and events can help your organization understand and streamline the journey.   

[Note:  The AIIM methodology is built upon the MIKE2 open source implementation framework.  Details on the MIKE2 implementation framework can be found at http://mike2.openmethodology.org.  The AIIM Training program applies this framework to specific technologies.

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Some other posts that might be of interest...

AIIM has a comprehensive e-mail management training program for those who wish to get serious about managing e-mail.

8 things you need to remember about message/e-mail archiving

1 -- Have a well defined and detailed calculated business case.

Organizations are facing various challenges to take back control and unlock business value of content, especially in e-mails. The business case for e-mail management is driven by four challenges:

1. Archive e-mail and content for storage space management in order to reduce operational costs introduced by the increasing volume and size of e-mails and multiple formats of content types 
2. Manage e-mail and content for legal obligations to comply with different rules and regulations which create duties of evidence and documentation, facilitate eDiscovery or indicate supervision and monitoring for non-compliance 
3. Combine e-mail and content to other loosely managed content to minimize risks caused by increased organizational scale and complexity, changed speed and style of communication, lost knowledge.
4. Manage e-mail and content to gain efficiency.  Associate e-mail and content to processes and business applications to accelerate business processes

In your business case you should state the cost savings for annual storage increase, maintenance, saving in licenses and data center cost. May be you save licenses cost due to decommission. For the case of compliance you should state the costs of eDiscovery minimum for the last two years and the savings. Input factors for calculation are for example the number of discoverable custodian mailboxes, the number of eDiscovery events per year, the cost of IT including administrator work, the cost of tape restoration and the cost of attorney services.

Beside these quantifiable there are also qualitative benefits, e.g. improved search facilities. These benefits should not be underestimated.

2 -- Have the right stakeholders onboard.

A project for message archiving affects the entire organization. The solution needs consensus and corporation of at least three departments: IT, Legal/Compliance and Business. Unfortunately they often fail to communicate effectively with each other and within the department. Historical communications barriers must be broken down. A new understanding of roles and responsibilities of all stakeholders must be set up to gain senior management support. At most they discuss topics of budget, retention and disposition or policies/procedures. 

3 -- Stakeholders should be aware of their requirements.

Stakeholders should structure their requirements in functional, legal and technical requirements. The requirements must be weighed between “must-have” and “nice-to-have”. Typical primary categories for functional requirements are capture, attachment handling, indexing, search/retrieval and offline support. Support of legal hold and supervision are examples for requirements of the Legal/Compliance department. Questions of architecture, integration, security and confidentiality are raised by the IT department during the evaluation process of a vendor solution.

4 -- Have a policy in place.

In 2008 BearingPoint conducted a survey on e-mail management among 500 companies in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. One key finding was that e-mail management is more than saving storage costs! The most important aspects are

• Search & Find
• Existence of written rules to handle e-mails (policies)
• Avoidance of risks, such as in cases of violation of laws or deadlines to be missed
• Alignment with business processes

Only 22% of the participating companies responded, that they had companywide policies. Existing policies covered the use of private e-mails (67%), mailbox size (62%) and offensive content (53%). Monitoring is centrally organized (50%). The Chief Information Officer (CIO) is responsible for preparing and monitoring the compliance of rules (37%).

The policy for e-mail archiving should be developed by all stakeholders. It should contain goals, aspects of usage and allowance, legal issues, ownership and security, retention and disposition.

5 -- Think about retention and disposition.

Companies that start e-mail archiving projects can be divided into five categories. On the one extreme there are companies that allow their employees to keep all e-mails forever. On the other extreme there are companies that force the deletion of every message. Between these two extremes, there are companies which try to manage their e-mails. The most common method for this is “restricted retention”. With this approach, companies limit the amount of messages a user can store. Another approach is “risk based retention”. Based on the risk, that an e-mail will have to be restored due to legal obligations, different categories are set up.  The last method  is “context based retention”, where e-mails are classified based on their context. E-mails within that category are archived with the document of same type attached, e.g. an e-mail containing contract information is stored together with this contract.

The leading industry practice approach is something between the risk and context based approach.

6 -- Perform a Proof of Concept and Reference Calls.

For evaluation of the proposed solution it is helpful to perform a Proof of Concept (PoC) with at least two vendors. The objective of a PoC is to ensure that the technology will work in the client´s environment and to test certain features and functions, which have been proposed. Therefore it is absolutely necessary to describe scenarios based on the functional, legal and technical requirements. For example, how is the archive process done manually and what do the user search process and interfaces look like. The legal department will be interested in legal hold and export functionality, for example. The IT department might discuss security and architecture issues in a workshop. The IT department will suggest a bulk archiving test with tons of messages in order to get an indication for sizing, performance and scalability. 

The PoC could be accompanied by references visits or at least reference calls with customers having the same challenges. It is helpful to develop a clear and structured questionnaire with your heaviest concerns. The results are part of the evaluation.

The PoC should be limited to a fixed duration of days with a presentation in front of all stakeholders and/or the senior management team.

7 -- Consider hosted SaaS model as an option.

Remotely hosted or outsourced Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions for e-mail archiving can help lower an e-mail archive’s financial need and complexity. However you may face some lacks of functionality and companies still have concerns about a compliance driven deployment for on-premise e-mail archiving and eDisovery solution. 

8 -- Include other content types for archiving.

Under the amendments of the US Federal Rules of Civil Procedure not only e-mail is relevant to litigation and eDiscovery. Other content types like files on shares, structured data in databases or business applications will become important for eDiscovery. So your former e-mail archiving strategy must be broader and your solution must cover these aspects.

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Some other posts that may be of interest...

8 steps you can take to better manage your inbox

8 key e-mail trends 

8 things you need to remember about e-discovery