Video: Leveraging Your Data: A Journey Through 3 Essential Information Gates | Duration: 3520s | Summary: Leveraging Your Data: A Journey Through 3 Essential Information Gates

Transcript for "Leveraging Your Data: A Journey Through 3 Essential Information Gates": Hi, everyone. Welcome to today's webinar, Leveraging Your Data, A Journey Through 3 Essential Information Gates. We're so happy you could join us today. And if you want to, go ahead and put in the chat where you're from. We'd love to see who all is tuning in today. So on today's agenda, we're going to be showing a presentation that our speakers, Kelly and Ian, prerecorded for us today. And following the presentation, we're gonna have a live q and a session. Kelly was not able to return for the q and a session today. So instead, we will have the wonderful Sue Gibbons joining Ian. So please be sure to submit your questions throughout, and we'll try to get to them as many of them as we can. You can submit your questions by navigating to the engagement panel on the right side of your screen, the same place where a lot of you are have already found the chat. And also there's a top there's 2. There's 3 tabs at the top of that q and a panel. There's a chat, docs, and q and a. So you can navigate between those. And the docs, we have a few helpful resources that are related to date's topic in there. Lastly, there's an orange button at the top of your screen that says register for 12:12 webinar. On December 12th at 1 PM EST, our panel of speakers will be giving their predictions for what's ahead in the new year, covering topics like evolving tech, mergers and acquisitions, changing compliance regulations, and more. And to register, all you have to do is click that button. Alright. And with that, we're going to dive into the presentation for today. Thank you for joining today. My name is Kelly Plarimal. I am the vice president of regional sales and client success for Canada. So I work closely with our counterparts in the United States every day. I have been working in the information management industry for just over 15 years. I just celebrated a day, my 15th year, in leading the client success operations and supporting companies execute on their records management programs. So I'm very happy to be here. Hello, everyone. It's a real pleasure to be here today. My name is Ian McPherson, and I am our unified sales director with Access. I'm based out of Calgary, Alberta. I've been working in information management for a little over 15 years now, and the majority of that time has been spent helping companies with their digital transformations and the services that we provide to support those initiatives. In my role at Access, I support our teams in bringing forward our unique approaches and options for storage and digitizing content to assist companies as they move forward with their information management initiatives. So thank you for having us here today. I'm excited. I think it'll be a great conversation. I'm gonna start sharing some slides, and we'll get the conversation going. Great. Thanks, Jamie. And I know we're we're here to talk about the the 3 gates as we call them. But before we do that, I wanna spend a few minutes on why these gates are important at a high level. All companies are dealing with at least 1 or more common elements of the information management life cycle. Everybody is creating and storing information, whether that be physical or electronic or in hybrid environments. Obviously that information needs to be stored and there's various strategies for storing that information. It's quite a common practice for organizations to separate their active content from their semi active content and have their inactive content in in another area, which is usually with off-site storage. Most organizations, as a whole, are looking to improve access to records. That can be for a number of reasons, looking to create internal efficiencies with how information is being accessed. It could be to increase the support for remote workers or remote clients. Most companies look to digitization to help create those efficiencies. And digitization is is often done for a number of different ways. In some ways, it it's done to increase that, that access to information. It's in other ways, it's done just to help reduce the physical footprint, that is dedicated to those records. But regardless of, the reasons why companies are digitizing content, and whether you're managing physical content, electronic, or you're in that hybrid environment, it's always very important to make sure that you have full security of the content, that you're controlling access to who who can see those records, who can access those records, and that you're ensuring a strong chain of custody to that content at all times. The overarching component is the compliance factor. Every organization needs to make sure that they're maintaining regulatory compliance so that you can effectively manage the life cycle of that content and not only store and access and manage that content, but also have that disposition cycle in place as you move forward. Our ultimate goal is to have an integrated information management program. As I said earlier, everyone's looking for a streamlined data access. You wanna be able to access that information as quickly and efficiently as possible. The compliance component is is critical. That's usually a goal that every organization has is how do how do we move forward with their program and make sure that we're compliant enterprise wide with how we're managing that content. Establishing that framework for consistency across the organization and how that information is stored and accessed really does help create those efficiencies. And and there's a number of ways that we can do that. Right? We start by looking at how we're how we're accessing that information, how it's stored. Can we use tools like automated classification to help index that content so that we can effectively access it when we need it? How can we manage the life cycle from a retention standpoint? Having a retention schedule is one thing. Actually, having the ability to to implement it and act on it is another. And any tools that we have to help keep that, process up to date and be able to execute that disposition process is is obviously beneficial. And, again, ultimately, we're looking for that enhanced security and that compliance throughout the organization. So I'm sure everybody on the call here is addressing some of these challenges. So I'd ask you to think about what challenges your organization is trying to address. And our goal for today is to talk about the the 3 gates as we call them and how we how we can help you get through that journey and reach that goal. So here we are the 3 gates. And when we started talking with with companies about what they're trying to achieve with their information management program, we encounter people at, various stages of planning and execution. And what we like to do is get people thinking about what we call the 3 gates to ensure that they're setting themselves up for long term success with their program. And obviously we're going to go into these 3 gates in much more detail moving forward, but at a high level, they're pretty straightforward. The first is having your policies and procedures. We will spend some time discussing the importance of policies and procedures and having them applied to your collection and why that is critical to ensuring the overall success of your program. We'll also then touch about gate 2, which is really managing your content. Right? Understanding how your organization utilizes, searches, manages content is going to help drive decisions to help you best execute your program to ensure that your users can find and manage the content when it's needed, but also do so in a very cost effective way. The third is making sure that we're considering the day forward approach. Right? It's ensuring that every step along the way, you're thinking about how you're gonna manage this information moving forward so that you have data integrity, compliance, and can manage the life cycle of those records. So those are the 3 gates, and we'll go through them in a lot more detail right now. I wanna start with with gate 1, which is policies and procedures. Right? Obviously, policies and procedures, they will vary across your organization depending on the business unit and the type of files being managed. But we do see some common challenges within organizations when it comes to policies and procedures. The first is knowing your content. Right? A lot of organizations are actually challenged in knowing what content they have, where it's being stored, who owns that content, and in some cases, which content is actually the source of truth. We quite frequently have information duplicated in various locations. We might have multiple versions of the same record stored. So it's very important that we do address that challenge and take the time to really understand what we have. The other challenge a lot of organizations have is simply around security. How are we accessing that information? How are we controlling who accesses that information? Everything from PPI to secure documents that need to be restricted for access, we need to make sure that we're controlling and addressing those issues. When it comes to electronic records, that that's a whole other set of challenges, of course. A lot of organizations are managing both electronic, physical copies. How do we ensure that we know which one is the source of truth? Do we have multiple versions? And are there regulatory requirements around, you know, can we manage this content electronically, or do we need that physical content? A lot of organizations are spending time and effort of addressing those challenges and might not have the skillset within the organization to address that. And that could be skills around the information governance, compliance, retention schedule management, but it could also be with the sheer effort to digitize content. And do we have the people and the technology and the resources to actually manage those efforts? And then of course the challenge is keeping up to date. Things change, they evolve. Not only the type of records that you're managing, but the regulatory requirements around how you manage that information. It's a constantly evolving world and we need to make sure that we're keeping our policies and procedures up to date and that we're executing accordingly as those requirements change. So let's talk a little bit more about what we really suggest that you consider when you're looking at policies and procedures. You know, the the first point is making sure that they're up to date. As I just mentioned, policies change, regulatory requirements, regulatory citations are constantly changing. We need to make sure that our internal processes, our internal policies are kept up to date, and they address the needs of your business. It's quite common for us when we're talking to organizations about their retention schedules and it comes time to update them. There might be new records collections. There might be changes in the type of business activities that are taking place that may warrant a refresh of the retention schedule that might lead to some changes in how we're managing that information. The the key thing that we find with applying your retention schedule and having those policies that's up to date is really determining what content can be destroyed. When companies are looking at at digitization, you wanna be very careful that you're just not blanketly going out and scanning a whole bunch of content that might be eligible for disposition a year or 2 from now. So it's really important to to have those policies up to date, make sure that you're looking at the content that you have, applying those retention policies, and using that to help drive decisions around what is best for that content. It might be that, content is eligible for destruction. It might be that it's eligible for destruction soon, and, you might be best just leaving it in storage. Or the flip side is, hey. Maybe this is a great candidate for digitization. The the next consideration is really making sure that you're looking at your physical and digital aspects of your information. It's important to know what content can be managed electronically versus what content must be managed physically. And I will suggest that you take the time to really dive into that because we always suggest collaborating with your business units and and your teams to understand what their requirements are. And quite often there's, there might be a preference within certain user groups to use physical content over digital, but that might be a preference. It might not be a regulatory requirement. So it's important to really understand what those needs are so that you can make decisions around what the best course of action is for that content moving forward. The the next consideration we have is is best practices. Right? We wanna try to make information as accessible as possible, as streamlined as possible, and really create efficiencies across the organization. And I know Kelly will talk a little bit more about this when we talk about GAIT too, but really trying to establish those best practices around how content is searched, how it's tracked, how it's indexed will will really help create some of those efficiencies moving forward. And sometimes that does require establishing some of those best practices across your organization. And in other cases, you know, levering technology to help implement some of those best practices. The the 4th consideration is obviously staying compliant when digitizing information. You know, I'm in Canada. In Alberta, we have something called the Canadian Governance Standard Board that has certain requirements for creating digital content. And it's very important that if we are going to take the time and the effort and and put in the investment to create digital content, that we're doing it in a way that we can uphold that content as the source of truth. So we often talk about the difference between creating what we would call a convenience copy versus a source of truth copy. And what we tend to experience is some organizations might not have the strongest best practices or their best practice may be that they're just scanning the content, not really adhering to those standards, and creating a convenience copy, that can lead to challenges when you're managing multiple versions. If you don't have a strong chain of custody, you don't have those audits controls in place, being able to come back later and say, this is my source of truth copy can be a challenge. So you wanna make sure that you're taking that into consideration moving forward. And it can also impact what your future plans are in terms of disposition and destruction. And if it is your goal to ultimately destroy the physical records, you want to make sure that you have created fully compliant content along the way. The 5th consideration is, of course, integrating those processes to ensure that the content is available when you need it. One of the things that we find, kind of coming back to some of the earlier points I made, is that you might have content in multiple locations. You might have it in multiple systems. You might have orphaned records in software tools that are no longer being supported or managed. So how do you bring that information together and make sure that you have some of those best practices in place so that you can not only get the most out of your efforts when you're scanning that content and managing that, but you're making it easy for your teams to search for that content that they know where to go, how to search for it, how to access it, and also setting yourself up for some of those day forward activities, around disposition or or potentially evolving how you manage that content in the future. So one of the things that we we used to hear a fair bit, and I'm going back a few years, is when when companies would, embark on a digitization effort, they put all the focus into to scanning the content. But they didn't really put a lot of effort into how are we actually gonna access and search this content and and how are we gonna manage the life cycle moving forward? And they don't wanna jump too far ahead. I know because they know we will have a discussion about the day forward. However, it is important that you're thinking about what the future is, how you're gonna access that content, how you're gonna manage it. And it really comes down to understanding what you have, what you need to keep, what you need to destroy, what content is a good candidate for digitization, and making sure that you execute that in a way that sets you up for success. And you know what? It's as simple as that in terms of policies and procedures. And I, I know that, we'll move on to gate 2. And and Kelly, I know, has a lot she wants to talk about. I I want to if you can elaborate a little bit more because safeguarding information is just it's imperative for operating your business successfully. And we talk a little bit about the benefits of collaborating with other business units across the organization. But can you speak to that a little bit more in terms of developing the policies and procedures and what best practices of what are the benefits of collaborating across multiple units and not just within your own team? Yeah. Well, you know, I think, collaboration is so important. I've heard the phrase and I'll repeat it here, and I'm sure people have heard it before, but these kind of initiatives are not really IT initiatives. They're change management initiatives, right? We're getting people on board. We're changing how they do things or, hopefully adding value to how they do things. But in order to do that, we need their input. That collaboration is so valuable in so many different ways. I mentioned that the the needs of the business or the activities within the business can evolve. So there might be something happening in a business unit that the information management team might not be aware of. That might trigger us to have a need to update your policy in a certain way to address that content. The other key thing with collaboration is understanding how that information how they prefer to manage that information, how they prefer to access that information. And I'm stepping on Kelly's toes here a little bit for for the next day. But, ultimately, the projects are only gonna be successful if people are comfortable and feel that their voices are heard and can access that information. So it's very important to know, for example, if if someone's looking for a record, how do they look for that record now? The other thing is when you do need that record, do you need it right away? When you required certain files, is it something that I need to have on my desk in 20 minutes, or is it something that I need maybe in 2 hours? Because that can also impact that the approach that you take in that content. So it's really, really important to understand what people's needs are, what their business activities are, what records it is that they have, and how they're being managed now so that you can address all of that and make sure that they know that their needs are being heard and addressed. And so many times I have executed digitization initiatives where people will say, we want you to scan the file like this. We want it named with this naming convention, and we want this type of metadata and go to it. Right? And we do a few files and we come back and we say, okay. Here you go. And they're like, oh, well, I, I would've actually liked it if we had this. Or if we maybe took the next session of the file and did it at the document level, because I like to look at the documents, not the whole file. So, you know, those are the kind of things that come out through discussions. Those are the kind of things that come out through doing pilots and letting people be exposed to the work that is being done. So they feel a part of it and they have an impact on making sure that it's gonna be successful for them. That's great information. And Kelly, I'm going to hand it to you for gate 2. Yeah. So the second gate that is essential to achieving and leveraging your digital transformation is managing the content. You heard Ian talk a little bit about that. And through this gate too, we will dive a little into what this looks like when you are assessing what you, what, where you're at in your digitization process. And then how can you build that foundation successfully and build that records management program that is sustainable and adaptable? So we're gonna touch a little bit on the sustainability and then adapting because we know things are constantly changing. We'll elaborate a little bit more into that to help set you guys up for success when you're looking at this program. So what is the strategy you need to include to ensure that you are providing a strong user experience for your organization? You heard Ian speak that a little bit previously. It is a very critical component is to is the experience of the organization. The first category you should start to look at is basically the solution, right? So how can you reduce the amount of time and expense to build that transformation and then leverage industry experience to assist in uncovering what that ideal, solution will look like. And then incorporate that into the business units that need to be supported. So you've got multiple different business units that are, are going to be a part of this digital transformation that need to be considered and have their, weigh in on things. 2nd is the compliance that EA kind of walked us through some of the regulatory requirements that are necessary to ensure that every record that you do create, you are safeguarding your information and you remain in compliance. So I know we talked on that. We're open to more, conversation. If, if you guys have any questions, during session or afterwards. The third component is, is building the strategy. So you've got to define your efficiencies here. So build that solution that enables your organization to work effectively, collaboratively so that the business units that need to be working together in current state that you're in today while you're building it, and then into that future state, you are sure that these business units are aligned, and each business unit has its clear direction process built in place, which is very, very important. The, the data map. So data mapping, this is the one that I spend quite a amount of time with many of the organizations that I work with is, you know, how are you going to manage that information? That is the critical step in this organizational path. It's important to ensure that you build and identify what information and what metadata you're going to capture for each record. So your information is not only easily accessible, but it's also well defined. Having a very well defined program of being able to access your materials is very, very critical. And we'll get into the indexing side of things momentarily. Another thing that you should absolutely consider is compatibility with software, that you're going to be using. So either existing or planned in the future to make sure that your program is technically supported is very, very critical too. And then the last, important strategy, to be considered, would be the ongoing management. This is the how. This is how you develop and manage the program going forward. And then what critical workflows need to be in place to create uniformity into the future. So in summary, leveraging all of these important workflows will build best practices and enhance your organization's experience. So this next topic, I, it really resonates with me. It happens to me all of the time. And, and I, I think it might resonate with some of the folks, on the session. Is the, that an ominous, do I have a digitization strategy in place or do I just digitize everything? And I have encountered many, with many organizations that have felt that need to, to scan all and save the records electronically, whether that be in a cloud based or locally to drives. And there are some challenges to digitizing everything that really need to be considered. So 3 important considerations that companies should weigh in on when you're deciding to digitize everything. Okay? Number 1 is the cost. A full scale project can be large. Okay. To digitize everything can be expensive. And there is a lot more just simply scanning the information you have to factor in prep work, indexing, collecting all of the little vital surgical information, storage, transportation. There's a very robust list of things you need to consider when budgeting for doing a scan all scenario. So these all play a significant role in budgeting for you. So it's a number one thing to think of is what is this going to cost to do it all? Timing is another thing that pops up. It's that projects that are all scanned or scan all means that there's a lot of material that needs to be scanned, which means that these types of digital transformation scans can take a lot longer to complete and can affect your budget if they're not being completed on time. What we're also seeing quite a bit with clients in is working with the legacy content and some of that content is necessarily trackable, due to legacy records management practices. So from my industry experience 15 years ago, when I was starting in an industry, a lot of folks were moving their material off-site to be compliant and ensure that they're safeguarding their information. And maybe they were only tracking a box number or a policy number. And there wasn't a lot of information, built into that material so that sometimes when that legacy content needs to be indexed, to be able to scan all, you have a lot of digging and prep work you have to do to go in and actually flip the lid of that material and find out what's inside of it. And then finally, access to the records. So in many case studies, for those of you who might know, 20% of what's scanned is actually viewed. So that's a very important question to ask yourself, will I need to access access information and what do I plan on digitizing? And if your answer to that question is that you're not sure that you don't believe that you're going to need to have access to all information, then scanning all that material should not be your digital transformation. It's very important to partner with an organization like Access to help analyze when it makes sense to scan all or what other options you may have to scan that might not be used today, such as your active files. So there's many different options when you're digitizing your material that keep you away from doing the scan all and certainly just focus on the stuff that's active, the stuff that you actually need to use. And those programs can be built and are in place today, such as unified with access. And then our fun stage here with indexing. So another component here to factor into digital transformation is the indexing. And it's by far the most important element to achieving accessibility, mitigating your risk and exposure, and it will help guide your strategy to get you to that cost effective solution. Indexing your information provides you with a lot of those benefits, right? So accessibility is how fast you can get it. And so a lot of that during the pandemic is being able to get your hands on the material and knowing what material to grab. So it's very, very important to capture that information and that data around what file you need to use. Accurate document classification is mitigating your risk and keeping that information too long. So sometimes it's have you held it in storage too long? Do you still need to use it? Or is it are you how quickly do you need to grab it in situations where there is a regulatory compliant matter? And then enabling that robust record keeping practice and locking in when information needs to be captured when creating a record, that results in saving your organization the unnecessary costs that can factor in moving forward. And then trying to locate that document, especially when you're in a situation where there's an urgent matter and you have to get on, get that in your hands very quickly. And then again, as I stated to you before, being able to decide whether a document needs to be sure, you can save a lot of time with really robust indexing practice sentence. So again, there are many ways that organizations like Access can assist companies today in achieving a well defined indexing practice. But the key components are is to leverage that expertise and find out what information you need to track and what's gonna be very valuable to you in the future of getting, your hands on that material. That's great, Kelly. I know I hear all the time. There's different myths and rumors and everything about creating an effective strategy when it comes down to these things. What are some of the most common ones that, that you hear? Yeah, there's a few. I covered a little of them earlier, but you know, the cost of scanning services, that's a big one. When it comes to costs, it's really important to remember that document scanning removes a much larger business exposure, which we find in office space. Commercial real estate is getting very, very costly. So scanning your material helps you to reduce that office space, reduce some of that storage that you might be dealing on-site with your active material. The ability to manage and process more documents with less people in less time. So it's there. It's accessible very quickly. It's it's at your fingertips. There's a couple of clicks of a button once it's digitized. And then again, like I stated, staying away from that scan all scenario and leveraging active file scanning programs that, organizations like us at access do, we can provide, those services with, the Unify active file service, platform that we offer. I would say that another one would be the overwhelming ceiling of the backlog of files to digitize. The documents have started adding up over the years, right? I talked a little bit about 15 years ago, how everything was just mitigate risk and get it off-site. Some of that information has added a lot of a significant feeling that it's too complex or too con time consuming of a project to take on. And they feel that they won't have the time to deal with it and or that they don't even know where to start in, in some cases. But companies again, like ACCESS, we can handle that heavy lifting. We'll facilitate the prepping, scanning, indexing. Essentially ACCESS is going to do all of that heavy work. And so that the companies can stay focused on utilizing the resulting documents and improve that efficiency and streamline those business processes going forward. Some of the things that some of our clients look at, it's actually a very, very good way to, to think of that approach when you are a little bit overwhelmed and feeling this is going to be a huge task is start small. So in one department, you know, you can start looking at accounts payable or human resources departments, and then expand the other departments. This helps break that project into more manageable, quick wins. So start small and just work your way through the path and you'll start noticing you're speeding things up and getting a little bit more familiar and custom with how that process will look like. And then I would say that the last one is just the big elephant in the room of the unknown of when it comes to document scanning. When a system has been in place for years, people often get comfortable and they struggle to adjust, especially if, the changes are perceived as significant. Like I touched on there a minute ago, companies can be hesitant to transition to document scanning after only ever using a system like paper file storage in the past. So there's that comfortability there that kind of just resides. Experience, you know, keep in mind that it experience document scanning companies will simplify that transition. They'll make sure that your document management soft software is implemented correctly and your teams have been trained properly. So they're comfortable with that new system. So there's a lot of support along the way during that transition and during that onboarding. And then your number 1 is please do your research, find that right scanning partner. We recommend that you look always for experienced providers with certifications, such as SOC 2, Type 2, HIPAA, PETA for the Canadians on the call, training, and really that, that they are a top reseller of document management and automation software. Those are pretty big hallmarks to top quality providers is do that. The situation, do your research and make sure it's a compatible partner. That's going to help you along the way. That's great. So we're on to gate number 3, forward approach. This is the best place to be right. Is you're we're here. So how do you implement that plan forward? So this is really what the gate tree is. So let's look at this kind of from a personal perspective to apply some of the strategies that we've spoken about today and just make us feel a little bit more at home. So we look at our 3 gates here and we say, let's put this in a scenario where, you're going to build your dream home. You've been fortunate enough to, to build your dream home. What it, what does that look like? So the first deed is naturally the policies and procedures that Ian touched on. So you have purchased the land, you've obtained your budget. You need to have the proper policies in place. So your home insurance, your necessary legal, finding information to own and build your home. And you have that critical step from a legal perspective in place to move forward and, and implement your strategy. So gate 1 policies and procedures, get your insurance, get your deed, own the property, make sure all the legalities are there so that you've got that base foundation to move to the 2nd gate, which is the managing of your content. So you've established your blueprints. You've decided what that plan's gonna look like or what that structure's gonna look like. And then you begin to build that strong foundation with the protections necessary to live safely and comfortably and build something that's sustainable, which then gets you into gate 3. So you've got your blueprints of the home. It's built. It looks great. It's safe. It's secure. All of the right legalities are in place. It's renovation time, right? That's the fun time. Sometimes in a couple of years, you get to renovate your home. So you have that well built strategy, and then you allow you're now able to renovate or customize your program with add ons in the future. So build that deck that you really wanna build on, on, on the property. Once the home's built, once the program is built, it's easy to modify and add things to the process as time and trends change. We do know that the digitization transformation is rapidly changing at all times. So once you have those gates put in place and you've built that robust strategy, it's going to be really easy to tailor into the future and ping into different things and modify how you're doing things in the future. That's great. Thanks, Kelly. I'll just touch on some additional thoughts on the day forward process. I mean, we we call it gate 3, but, ultimately, you don't wanna wait until you're done gate 12 before you start thinking about gate 3. You really wanna be thinking about all these gates right from the onset. And that's what we typically do when we start having conversations with people. They they wanna go down this path is make sure that they're considering thinking about all 3 of these gates so that they're building an effective plan. And when we're looking at the date forward, we're not gonna be successful date forward unless we've established those those policies and procedures that we've already talked about. Kelly talked about the importance of indexing and the importance of of making sure you know how you're gonna access that content. I can't tell you how many times I've talked in talked with people and they'll say, oh, you know, we scanned content, but it didn't really work for us. I know we have a real challenge in actually accessing the the information that we have scanned, and that's usually a symptom of not taking the time or potentially changing needs and how that information is searched and accessed. And if we plan for that early in gates 12, we're gonna be so much more successful with the day forward because we've got the information, we've got it tracked the way we want it, and we know that we can search and manage it. Developing those workflows is is also but such a key component of the date forward. When we're talking to companies and we say, how are you gonna manage this electronic content once it's created? We have everything from, you know, we haven't thought of it yet to we have a software system or we're going to buy a software system. It really is important to take the time to consider what those steps look like for your organization. If you do have a software system in mind or you already have 1, we wanna make sure that the information is named, has the metadata, has the indexing so that it can be managed in those systems. If you don't have a system yet, we wanna make sure that we're enabling, you as best as we can so that we can implement that down the road. But ultimately, your team members need to know how to access that information. They need to be able to do it in an efficient way. And to the next point, if we are managing kind of a hybrid, which is very common these days where we have companies managing both paper and electronic, we need to make sure that we have the best practices, the policies, procedures, the workflows so that our team members know when to go to the physical, when to go to the electronic, when it's the source of truth. Do we have the chain of custody in place so that we can ensure that? And, Hey, I'm based in Calgary, Alberta, oil and gas energy sector. One of the challenges that we often see is a company has digital records. They might still have their physical records if they didn't have a plan to destroy those. And when it comes time to divest or they sell some of their assets, it can become a real challenge of do we turn over the physical files? Do we turn over the electronic files? Which one of this is the source of truth? And unless we have very well defined policies and procedures, and we can prove that we've been following them, sometimes there's a lot of extra effort involved in those transactions because we can't say with certainty, which one is the source of truth. So important to have that in place. The next point here, of course, scanning your low volume to your high volume. Someone actually asked a question of, we scan content during COVID. Should we go back and rescan it? The thought process that we have is take your policies and procedures, understand how your business units are accessing this information. What is their need? We talked about it before, you know, is this content due for disposition in a year? Then you probably don't wanna scan it all, but are we gonna hang on to it for quite a while, and is it fairly active content? That might qualify for something that you do scan up front. More often than not, as Kelly stated, only about 20% of content that's scanned as a project is ever accessed. So we we recommend companies identify the content that may have an urgent need for scanning and get that scanned if if that's the right thing. But on the flip side, if you've got some of that legacy content that isn't accessed very often and when we do need to access it, we don't need it in 30 seconds. If we have it within a few hours, we're good. Then you can start looking at some of the other approaches to have access to it electronically when you need it without having to spend the the upfront time and and effort to scan everything at once. So building that approach that works for your organization is is the right thing to do. And, of course, making sure that you have the security in place, the compliance in place so that when you do spend all that time and effort and budget to go down this road, that you're, you're doing it in an effective way so that you don't have to rescan content that you might have scanned, when you needed a copy really quick for convenience purposes. Try to manage some of those things so that you're looking long term, protecting the security, meeting all those required regulatory requirements, and also setting yourself up so that eventually, depending on your organization and your regulatory requirements, that you can destroy that content when the life cycle meets its ends. Planning for the day forward, it really means making smart decisions around your policies and procedures so that you can access that information, harness the value of that information, spend your money wisely so that you have a good return on investment, and protect that investment. And really, we're talking about it as the 3rd gate, but it comes back to the first two. Right? And by looking at all three of those gates, you're gonna take that journey in a way that gets you where you wanna be, and, hopefully, it does it in a cost effective way with full compliance along the journey. Comments saying that I was on mute. And I also just realized that I forgot to introduce myself at the beginning of the webinar too. I'm Melanie. I'm a content marketing specialist with Access, and I'm going to get us started on our q and a session. I'm going to have Ian and Sue join me on stage now. There we go. Hello everybody. Ian, we already were introduced to you during the recording, but, Sue, you haven't had a chance to introduce yourself to the audience yet. So please take it away. So hi, everyone. I'm, I've been working for access for close to 4 years, but I've been in the records at the management industry doing compliance and governance for over 20. So I help out in the product management. I help out with the technical sales, and I have a wealth of background in records management. And that's why they invited me to participate in this discussion today. So nice to meet you all. Look forward to hearing your questions. Awesome. Thank you. So to start off our q and a session, I actually have a question, and it's one that has popped up during our webinars in the past a handful of times. How does electronic content get treated differently from physical, specifically in terms of retention? You want me to take that one first, Ian? Yeah. Go ahead, Sue. Yeah. So, you know, historically, when people created retention schedules and you were dealing with physical, you had a retention schedule that was probably thousands of line like, thousands of record series. Could you identify all the different types of records in it? The fact today is that we have so many different repositories where we're managing information, whether it's physical, we're storing it on-site, we're storing it off-site with access, we're storing it in m 365 or in your line of business systems. And the reality is that your retention schedule now has to encompass all information assets, not just physical. And in looking at that, we have we've come to the conclusion that a bigger bucket approach is a much better process for managing records. And what I mean by that is that regardless of the format of the record, whether it's digital or whether it's physical, we're gonna put a policy on it. And that policy should apply to wherever that record is actually managed, whether it is off-site, whether it is in your m 365, whether it is your OpenText or whatever system that you have. And the deal is is that, you know, when we look at our retention policies, those retention policies need to comply with a whole bunch of regulations. And those regulations, some of those regulations actually dictate the format of how you need to keep those records. So all of that has to come into play so that when we're creating these policies, we have a more broader approach. And the reason for that, our information assets, where we're managing our information, is growing every single day. And so if I start creating policies that this is for physical, this is for digital, I'm gonna miss the opportunity. I'm not gonna be able to handle the actual life cycle of the destruction of records effectively. So I don't know if you want to add to that, Ian. I think, Sue, you covered it you covered it very well. I mean, I think the overall concept is you you have to look at policies that cover both and look at them as 1 and the same wherever you can is the way to do it. Yeah. And, you know, one of the questions or comments that came out before, they were asking or Ian had mentioned before, we were talking about collaboration. In creating that policy, it has to be a collaborative approach across your organization. It's not just legal that's doing it. It's not just privacy, which is really important right now. You have to look at the approach of how people are working with information, where your crown jewels are, what those records are, so that when you create that policy, you take all those aspects of your program into place to create a policy that everyone could adhere to. That's great. Very thorough. Thank you for that. So for our next question, I'm going to share one on screen here that Carolyn asked during the presentation, and it's specific to a cost benefit analysis for digitization. Do either of you guys have any thoughts here? Yeah. You know, I can I can help with that one because it's something that I I come across a lot? I I spend a lot of my time, working with our clients and trying to determine what the best approach is. And we're usually looking at do we do we scan it all, upfront? Do we scan it as as needed? What if we just leave it in in storage and and only, you know, access it when we need it physically, and destroy it when the disposition cycle comes up? And what I usually look at is the the costs associated with each one of those. Just straight up. If, if we're not accessing that content very often, probably leaving it in storage is going to be your best bet. And, most of our partners use a third party storage, provider. So if you've got those long term legacy records and they're in storage, it's usually fairly easy to estimate what the cost of storing that content is until it, is eligible for disposition. When we're looking at scanning it all upfront versus scanning it as needed, we really look at that activity level. Right? How often are we how often are we actually requesting those files? As Sue mentioned earlier, we find only about 20% of content that is scanned is ever requested. In a lot of cases, it's actually lower lower than that. And, you know, I'll give you an example. I was just working with, with an organization that was going through this this same question, and we we, looked at their cost to scan everything and we were close to to 1,000,000 of dollars to to scan it all. And, we actually had this content in storage with us. So we're able to look and see how much of that content is actually requested. And it was less than 1% of that content on an annual basis is ever actually pulled back. So it was really easy when you look at those type of numbers, you know, it potentially 1,000,000 of dollars to scan everything when we're only accessing 1% of it. Is it worth it? And, you know, we we're happy to kinda dig into the details and help build some spreadsheets and kind of forecast what those costs would look like, but those are the options and the considerations that we're usually looking at to determine what the return on investment, is from those those initiatives and what the best path forward might be for yourself. Great. Sue, do you have anything to add on before I, move on to the next question? The only thing I would add on here, taking it from the electric side electronic side versus the digital side, is that a lot of organizations look to migrate their digital information into new platforms. And the fact is is you probably have a whole lot of rot in there, which is redundant, obsolete, and trivial information. And what you really need to do is kind of identify those those files, get rid of them, right, so that you have the bet the best information for your user community. The worst thing you can do is take your, you know, your take garbage in and garbage out. You know, garbage goes into the next, or or your not great information goes into your next platform. We do wanna make sure that we have the right information for our users so that searching and utilizing that information becomes more effective. Awesome. Thank you. Alright. Next question that we have, I'll also share on screen, and it's asking for some tips for identifying the source of truth. Yeah. Maybe I can start on that one, Sue, and I'm sure you can you can add, some thoughts. From my perspective, it really comes down to to a few things. If we're creating digital content, and you want it to be the source of truth, you have to make sure that you followed the the regulatory requirements, for creating that content. So, I mentioned during the previous, webinar that we just watched that in Canada, we have the Canadian governance standard board requirements. So there's very specific requirements when you're creating data and the information that needs to be captured in order to uphold that document of the as the source of truth. So first off, you wanna make sure that the documents that you're creating, meet whatever your retype regulatory requirements are so that you can actually say this is the source of truth. One of the key requirements is having that chain of custody and an audit control. So if you've created the original version, you've you've created it in a way that it is, you know, can be deemed as the source of the truth, but how do you maintain it as the source of truth? How do you make sure that that is upheld throughout its life cycle as as the source? And this is where we wanna make sure that you're retaining that information in a secure, platform, right, environment, as opposed to just having it in shared drives where you can maintain the audit control. You you can see who's maybe edited the file and you have that full, ability to track, the life cycle of that record as opposed to just putting it out there in into the world and and kind of losing control over which one is your source of of truth. The other challenge that we have is when you've created electronic content, and even if you've created it as the source of truth and you're maintaining it as the source of truth, if you still have the physical file in circulation, that can lead to a lot of challenges because you need to make sure that, you know, any changes that happen to the physical file are also happening to the electronic file. So, again, it comes back to policies and procedures. If you're not destroying that physical file when you're creating the electronic, what are you doing to ensure that it's locked down? And that if anyone is accessing or leveraging or using that physical file in any way, that you've got a process and a plan in place to make sure your electronic content is, is kept up to speed. And I mentioned the example in the webinar where oil and gas companies, you know, go to do a divestment and they've got physical files and electronic files and which one is the source of truth. And if they don't have those, those best practices in place, it can be very challenging. Yeah. So the only thing I'd add on to that, Ian, is typically organizations start creating an asset management system. So they identify those platforms that are the the source of truth, and everything else is considered convenience copy. And as long as you communicate that, that's part of the whole change management process that you talked about in the webinar. As long as you communicate that, then we know the value of that record and we know how it's supposed to be used and the proper controls are in that source repository, meaning that they have the property security controls, life cycle controls, and audit controls for those records. Great. Alright. So I know we are about out of time. So I think we can, answer one more question here. So, we just had one come in from Mavis. Actually, 2. I think they're related. So I'm gonna share the one on the screen here. And it's about helping business units understand, kinda, what content is supposed to go where. And I think this really boils down to how you do change management within your organization. So do you guys have any advice to share that may be helpful for Mavis? You know, I I can get us started on that. It's you. I mean, the, the first thing that I that I think of when I see that question is really, again, coming down to that that first gate. Gate 1 is understanding your content and how it's accessed. One of the steps that we often go through when we're starting these journeys is really sitting down and understanding what records we actually have and understanding who the owner is, of that content, how it's currently stored, what the retention, you know, policies are pertaining to that material, how often it's accessed, will help steer us in the right direction as to how that's being managed. And we talk about the collaboration quite often there are records out there that we might have forgotten about, Right? Or might not be being properly addressed. So it's really good to take the time to to to do that inventory or the data map, understand what you have, and and really drill down and make sure you understand how it's being used, to help guide those decisions. And I think in, you know, that that overall plan is what you would call an information governance plan for your organization. So information governance plans helps you to identify what are the key locations where you should be putting records, what's your migration strategy to move those records into a repository that can properly be controlled, who needs access to those records, and what's the lifecycle process. Now, in information and asset management, understanding all your different repositories is great, but you're also going to identify where your risk areas are. So you may have repositories where you manage records today that actually have no way of applying appropriate lifecycle or the appropriate, security controls and that's really helpful to understand What you need to do with those directors and how you know, maybe in the future you're going to comply with your policies and procedures That's great. Sue, Ian, thank you so much for answering all of these questions. We are about out of time today. So if we didn't get a chance to answer your question, feel free to reach out to us. We're always willing to continue that conversation and dig into the specifics of whatever you guys need help with. And, again, if you wanna join us for that webinar in December, feel free to click the button at the top of your screen. That'll automatically register for you for it. But thank you everyone for your questions and participation today, our speakers again. And thank you to Danielle and Cooper in the background, helping me moderate everything and keep things moving smoothly. So until next time, we'll see you later. Thank you.