The AIIM Blog

Keep your finger on the pulse of Intelligent Information Management with industry news, trends, and best practices.

Blog Feature

Artificial Intelligence (AI)  |  Data Management

Business Forms and AI

Nobody gives much thought to business forms; they just ‘are.’ As for the management of business forms, almost nobody knows that Forms Management is a ‘thing’; many likely wonder why business forms even need managing. Frankly, it’s as if business forms are unimportant, yet that could not be further from reality. They are critically important, and their centrality and importance in the world of information management and enterprise automation will likely grow exponentially over the coming years.

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Blog Feature

AIIM Community  |  Women in Information Management (WIIM)

The State of Women in Information Management

March is Women’s History Month and in celebration of women, I want to let you know about AIIM's Women in Information Management group and how we are supporting the information management community.

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14 Steps to a Successful ECM Implementation

Making an ECM implementation successful requires planning and attention to detail. The best way to create the right solution is to identify organizational goals and priorities. Learn how to manage a successful implementation in our free guide.

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Artificial Intelligence (AI)  |  Information Governance

Polishing Rough Diamonds: How Information Governance Boosts AI-Driven Innovation

With AI-centric use cases expanding to extract value from both physical and digital assets, it’s time to see information governance as a way to accelerate innovation.

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Blog Feature

AIIM Conference  |  Intelligent Information Management (IIM)

Information Management During Mergers & Acquisitions

In January, I served as a panelist during a three-part series on mergers and acquisitions in the association space. Hosted by the ASAE Executive Management Advisory Council, the series explored what non-profit organizations need to consider before, during, and after mergers and acquisitions. The panelists were mainly executives and legal professionals, so the fascinating conversations focused very much on strategy, governance, finances, and human capital.

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Blog Feature

Data Management  |  Digital Transformation

Let’s Give Information Its Own Office

In my role as The Info Gov Guy™, I consult with clients from up and down their organizational charts: in records, IT, legal, HR, marketing, etc. What this tells me is that their employers don’t consider their information to be a core business asset – which is odd because they do acknowledge their success depends completely on their ability to quickly find and retrieve current, accurate, and properly safeguarded information.

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Blog Feature

Business Process Management (BPM)  |  Document Management

Intersection of Forms Management and Information Management

Recently, the Association for Intelligent Information Management and Business Forms Management Association announced that they have joined forces. BFMA is now a part of AIIM! Read the full press release here. As a longtime board member of BFMA and a new member of AIIM, I wanted to share why forms management matters to information management.

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Blog Feature

AIIM Conference  |  Collaboration

Workshops Work at the AIIM Conference 2024

Why do workshops work so well in adult learning? Read on to see how we are incorporating workshops at AIIM24 and how you can use workshops as a powerful tool for adult learning.

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Blog Feature

AIIM Conference  |  Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Mapping AI Readiness Content at AIIM Conference 2024

Artificial Intelligence is a key focus of AIIM's new strategy, which the AIIM Board of Directors debuted in January 2024. So it's only fitting that AI take the lead at the AIIM Conference 2024 in San Antonio, Texas, April 3-5.

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Blog Feature

AIIM Conference  |  Business Process Management (BPM)  |  Intelligent Information Management (IIM)  |  Process Improvement

The Critical Role of SOPs in Proactive Information Management & Minimizing Downtime

In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, information reigns supreme. A company's ability to manage its information proactively and effectively often dictates its success in the market. However, with the increasing volume and complexity of data, it becomes imperative to have a solid framework in place to process and protect this vital asset. Enter Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).

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Blog Feature

AIIM Conference

Telling a Story with Keynotes at AIIM Conference 2024

Storytelling has been a trending tactic for event planners for the past couple years. And with good reason. Stories enrich experiences and make education and messaging more memorable. Here's how we are incorporating storytelling at the AIIM Conference 2024 in San Antonio, Texas, April 3-5 and some tips for how you can incorporate storytelling tactics when planning your own meetings and events.

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Blog Feature

Certified Information Professional (CIP)  |  Intelligent Information Management (IIM)

Empowering Progress: How AIIM's Certification Transformed IsDB's Approach to Intelligent Information Management

I am so honored that nine of my colleagues at Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) have successfully been Certified as “Certified Information Professional” (CIPs) by AIIM.

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AIIM Community  |  Human Resources

Navigating Your Career Path with Challenges and Supports

I love information management! I love the information governance, records management, and data governance fields. Most of my family and friends think I’m crazy and I would agree with them. This work doesn’t excite everyone. I didn’t always use to be in this field though. Before entering the information management field, I spent 25 years in higher education. Working various roles at colleges and universities across the state of NY was what I loved at the time. I even went to school for it, earning a Master’s degree in Higher Education Administration.

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Blog Feature

New Strategy System Reimagines AIIM

2024 is going to be a special year. As we celebrate our 80th anniversary, we are also launching a brand new strategy. This new strategy reimagines AIIM for the age of artificial intelligence where trusted data and information are essential. In the coming months, we will be sharing much more about our new strategy, but I am very excited to give you a preview of what's to come.

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Blog Feature

Information Governance

Information governance: First, know thyself

The value of information governance is obvious to many business and IT leaders. But like confronting an attic that is full of junk, the task of organizing and governing disorganized data can seem overwhelming. Maybe that’s why too many technology and business decision-makers put information governance on the back burner, there to be ignored until a crisis arises and there is a frantic push to find critical information quickly.

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Blog Feature

Content Services  |  Enterprise Content Management (ECM)  |  Information Governance

Navigating the Content System Evolution: How Many Content Systems Do You Manage?

AIIM Research shows the number of content systems in organizations is on the rise Organizations everywhere face the challenge of managing an ever-increasing volume of content. From documents and files to multimedia assets and web content, CRMs and ERPs, the pressing need for more broadly encompassing information management has become paramount. According to the AIIM 2023 State of the IIM Industry Report, it is evident that organizations are adopting an increasing number of content systems to handle their diverse content needs.

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Blog Feature

Collaboration  |  Document Management  |  File Shares

The Future of Collaboration Is Today

As organizations have settled into the business of the business, one thing seems clear: the new workplace is much different than the one we were used to. Remote work and virtual teams are now a prevalent way of working, with on-site employees often the exception rather than the rule. Now that work-from-home has proven to be a viable alternative, C-Suite executives and business owners are less likely to invest in the resources, infrastructure, and space needed for all of their workers to return to business as usual.

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Blog Feature

Certified Information Professional (CIP)

CIP Task Force and Beta Testers Contribute to Updated Certified Information Professional Credential

AIIM debuted a new version of the Certified Information Professional (CIP) credential. As of November 27, 2023, AIIM is offering a new version of the exam, which reflects the skills needed for today’s information professionals. 

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Blog Feature

AIIM Community  |  Certified Information Professional (CIP)

My CIP Story: Using Certification to Advance Myself and Others

I am brimming with pride right now. On November 27, 2023, the Association for Intelligent Information Management (AIIM) debuted a new version of the Certified Information Professional (CIP) credential. On November 27, I also found out that I had earned my CIP!

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Blog Feature

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

How Generative AI Can Improve Enterprise Search

I was inspired to write this post after listening to an episode of “This Week in Windows” on Leo Laporte’s TWIT.TV podcast network. Leo and one of his co-hosts got into an interesting discussion on the use of Generative AI like ChatGTP with respect to search on the internet. Leo seemed to be making the same mistake many do, and confusing the concepts of using a search engine to answer a query by finding sources of information, and asking a Generative AI system based on a Large Language Model (LLM) to answer a question. The two things are similar but not the same, and what was being discussed was actually adding ChatGTP to Bing, bringing two technologies together to search for information.

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Blog Feature

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI in the Real World

Recently, I was lucky enough to be part of a networking group that got to see a real world demo of Chat GPT in a highly practical use case. The use case was focused on internal search within an organization and utilized the strengths of Chat GPT as a Large Language Model (LLM). The organization demonstrating the use case explained they used a conversational use interface (UI) that focused on user experience and making it easier for the user to find the information they were looking for without having specific domain knowledge or expertise in "prompt engineering." The demo sparked great conversations about what various organizations are doing with pre-trained Large Language Model tools like those provided by Open AI and Microsoft.

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Blog Feature

Archiving  |  Digital Preservation  |  Digital Transformation

An Overview of NARA's Newest Guidance on Digitizing Permanent Federal Records

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is the nation's record keeper. We identify, protect, preserve, and make publicly available the historically valuable records of all three branches of the federal government. NARA is also the nation’s records manager. That is to say, NARA’s Office of the Chief Records Officer for the U.S. Government leads records management throughout the federal government and assesses the effectiveness of federal records management policies and programs. Part of that work is to issue guidance to federal agencies on a wide variety of records management topics. One of NARA’s newest guidance products to federal agencies is regulations with digitization standards for permanent records.

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Blog Feature

AIIM Community

Beyond AI: Advice and Takeaways from AIIM Solutions Showcase & Strategy Summit

In early October 2023, AIIM partnered with the AIIM Florida Chapter to host the AIIM Solutions Showcase & Strategy Summit in Tampa, Florida. This new event concept highlighted a local chapter and community while creating greater accessibility to AIIM's leadership and strategy. This terrific event was well attended and featured some great education. It emphasized the importance of knowledge sharing and relationship building in a community of practice. Here are my top takeaways from the event.

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Blog Feature

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Takeaways from the Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence

In the U.S., President Joe Biden’s administration issued an executive order on artificial intelligence, which “establishes new standards for AI security.” The Executive Order issued on October 30, 2023 directs several actions designed to “protect Americans from the potential risks of AI systems.”

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Blog Feature

Artificial Intelligence (AI)  |  Big Data  |  Data Management  |  Knowledge Management

The Critical Role of Content Architecture in Generative AI

What is Generative AI? Generative AI has caught fire in the industry – almost every tech vendor has a ChatGPT-like offering (or claims to have one). They are claiming to use the same technology – a large language model (LLM) (actually there are many Large Language Models both open source and proprietary fine-tuned for various industries and purposes) to access and organize content knowledge of the enterprise. As with previous new technologies, LLMs are getting hyped. But what is generative AI?

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Blog Feature

Artificial Intelligence (AI)  |  Information Governance

Artificial Governance Resources

AI Governance Resources Patricia C. Franks and Scott Cameron provided this list of helpful resources. Be sure to check out their AIIM blog post about paradata and documenting artificial intelligence (AI) processes.

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Blog Feature

Artificial Intelligence (AI)  |  Metadata

Paradata: Documentation for Responsible Artificial Intelligence

Learn about paradata and how it can be used for documenting AI processes. This special guest blog post was authored by: Patricia C. Franks, School of Information, San Jose State University, California, USA Scott Cameron, School of Information, University of British Columbia; Vancouver, Canada

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Blog Feature

Information Governance  |  Intelligent Information Management (IIM)

A New Records Strategy for the US Department of Defense

Navy Petty Officer1st Class Rholanda Tucker, assigned to the "Blacklions" of Strike Fighter Squadron 213, conducts routine maintenance on a 20mm gun from an F/A-18F Super Hornet in the hangar bay of the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford in the Adriatic Sea, July 16, 2023. The Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group is on a scheduled deployment in the U.S. Naval Forces Europe area of operations, employed by the U.S. Sixth Fleet to defend U.S., allied, and partner interests. Photo By: Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Aaron Arroyo

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Blog Feature

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Eliminate Bias for Ethical and Responsible Artificial Intelligence

"With great power comes great responsibility" is an adage that Stan Lee’s Spider-Man popularized in popular comics, films, and other media. In Information Management today, there is great power in systems that leverage Artificial Intelligence for quickly making decisions and processing massive volumes of information. As information managers, we have a responsibility to understand that these systems have a potential for bias and how to identify and mitigate risks associated with producing reliable and ethical systems.

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Blog Feature

AIIM Comments on AI Accountability

Governments around the world have started the arduous process of developing regulations and standards for artificial intelligence. In June 2023, AIIM formally responded to a request for comment from the U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) on AI accountability. According to the NTIA website, more than 1,400 responses were submitted. Information management is not an insular profession and it's most successful in an organization when it's focused outward on the needs of stakeholders and business outcomes. As such, AIIM's leadership strongly believes that we must take a strong, active stance on how AI tools use and produce information. AIIM believes it's vital that regulators develop flexible and practical guardrails for how information is treated during AI development and use. Guardrails will empower innovation, boost adoption, and ensure accountability.

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Blog Feature

Artificial Intelligence (AI)  |  Automation  |  Intelligent Information Management (IIM)  |  Process Automation

The 4th Wave of IDP is Here

Since the earliest forays into optical character recognition (OCR) by Ray Kurzweil in the early 1970s, software developers have been on a mission to teach computers how to do the paperwork for us. What if the computer could replace the interminable number of hours needed each day in offices around the globe for humans to read documents, understand the meaning, and extract the right data for the next step in a work process? What if the computer could also do the data entry?

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Blog Feature

Content Migration  |  Digital Transformation  |  Intelligent Information Management (IIM)

Why Has Digital Transformation Stalled?

Research Indicates Digital Transformation Has Stalled After we received the survey responses for the AIIM 2023 State of the Intelligent Information Management Industry Report, I spoke to the report’s authors, Dave Jones and Theresa Resek, about a concerning statistic. Enterprise digital transformation (DT) efforts have stalled. Dave later wrote in the report “over 65% of organizations have achieved significant successes with DT, but that still leaves at least a third who have not.”

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Blog Feature

AIIM Community  |  Collaboration  |  Human Resources  |  Women in Information Management (WIIM)

The Significance of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Information Management

In honor of Pride Month in June, I wanted to share some thoughts about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the information management industry.

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Blog Feature

AIIM Community  |  Human Resources  |  Market Intelligence

Attracting and Retaining the Next Generation of Information Management Leaders

AIIM has been discussing the next generation of information management leaders and how the industry can better attract and retain young professionals quite a lot in 2023, and with good reason.

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Blog Feature

Big Data  |  Compliance  |  Electronic Records Management (ERM)  |  Information Governance

Pending Updates to Regulations of Archives in Colombia

This article was written by AIIM Florida Chapter Board Member Alvaro Arias Cruz, District Director of Archives of Bogotá. It was originally published in the AIIM Florida Chapter Newsletter in April 2023. Learn more about the AIIM Florida Chapter at https://aiimfl.org/. Colombia has one of the most robust and comprehensive archives laws in the Latin American region, identified as the General Archives Law (Law 594 of 2000). Through this state norm, Colombia and all its public institutions have made substantial progress in document management and archives administration, so much so that it has been recognized nationally and internationally as a reference for several countries to develop their own legal frameworks on their public archive policies.

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Blog Feature

AIIM Community  |  AIIM Conference  |  Market Intelligence

Information Management in Brazil

I was in Brazil recently to keynote the Information Show in Sao Paulo. Traveling to and speaking at Information Management conferences is endlessly fascinating. One might think that, except for language and location, Brazilian information management professional would be similar to their counterparts in North America and Europe, and in some regards, they are, but the differences can be surprising.

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Blog Feature

AIIM Conference

AIIM23 Conference: The Latest Trends and Insights in Information Management

The AIIM 2023 Conference boasted a first-time attendee percentage of 61% and was graced by representatives from 28 countries. The overall agenda featured more than 80 sessions, so many topics and perspectives enriched the attendee experience. All the keynotes and general sessions were well-attended and ranged from discussing orthodox beliefs in the industry; the value of storytelling in IM; perspectives on artificial intelligence; and the C-Suite's take on Information Management.

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Blog Feature

Analytics  |  Intelligent Information Management (IIM)

2023 State of the Intelligent Information Management Industry Report

AIIM is proud to release its State of the Intelligent Information Management Industry report for 2023. Filled with insights and trends that organizations should take note of, the report results from a survey conducted among AIIM members. It provides a comprehensive overview of the current state of information management across different industries.

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Blog Feature

AIIM Community

The Secret Value of AIIM: A True Story

When Tony invited me to write a guest blog for AIIM, I planned to write a techie piece on the latest document AI news. I was even tempted to ask ChatGPT to write one in the style of Monty Python. You’ll be pleased to know that moment of temporary insanity quickly passed. Instead of techie talk, I would like to tell you a story about the secret value of AIIM and why I think it’s vital that we all pitch in and help Tori Miller Liu and the team to move AIIM forward.

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Blog Feature

AIIM Community  |  AIIM Conference

The Times They Are A-Changin’

Then you better start swimmin' Or you'll sink like a stone For the times they are a-changin'. When Bob Dylan wrote his famous song “The Times They Are a-Changin” in 1963, it was an anthem for the era and the civil rights movement. Dylan’s ageless lyrics still resonate today as we navigate political, economic, societal, and technological changes. The information management industry is also undergoing pivotal change due to AI, increasing information chaos, emerging workplace trends, and changing demographics.

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Blog Feature

AIIM Community

Is AIIM Celebrating Its 80th Anniversary?

We have an information dilemma on our hands at AIIM. Starting the year, we believed that 2023 is the 80th anniversary of AIIM. We have several blog posts referencing 1943 as AIIM’s founding date. In fact, we celebrated our 75th anniversary just five years ago. 2023 must be our 80th anniversary, right?

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Blog Feature

Data Management  |  Enterprise Content Management (ECM)  |  Intelligent Information Management (IIM)

Data vs. Content: Does the distinction still matter?

This is an article about names and whether or not they matter. My first intuition was to open with the quote, “What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet,” but I thought better of it. Not because it was too cliche, which it was, but because it immediately transported me back to my sophomore year of high school, when the greatest achievement of my life up to that point was winning the role of Romeo in the drama club's production of Romeo and Juliet. Please spare me the reminder of my nerdy teenage years! Anyway, onto the matter at hand. The purpose of this article is to begin a conversation about data and content and whether or not the long-held distinction between the two is still important. I'm admitting to you upfront that I don't have the answer. Instead, I only aim to share what I know.

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Blog Feature

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Unpacking ChatGPT for the Information Management Industry

Take a deep breath. This is another article about ChatGPT and Generative AI. I'll be honest. I am the type of person that struggles to resist a good hype cycle. In 2021, I couldn't stop talking about the metaverse. I even organized a half-day workshop on the metaverse, with part of the event held in the metaverse. It was very meta.

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Blog Feature

AIIM Community

Hi AIIM, I'm Tori. It's Nice to Meet You.

Last September, I had just picked up my youngest child from daycare when I received an eagerly awaited phone call. If you have ever been in a car with a squirming, squalling toddler, you know that it’s not an environment conducive to hearing. However, I am nearly certain that I was told that the Search Committee and AIIM Board of Directors had selected me as AIIM’s next President and CEO. I am thrilled that I didn’t mishear and have now joined this special organization.

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Blog Feature

Information Governance  |  Sharepoint and Office 365

Getting Started with Microsoft 365 Governance

I know Halloween has come and gone, but I’d love for you to entertain a horrifying scenario for a moment. It’s March 15, 2020, and the United States has just gone into lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Empire State Building in New York City, the Prudential Center in Boston, Willis Tower in Chicago, and office buildings across the country have become vacant ghost towns. Millions of companies and organizations have to figure out overnight how to conduct business outside the walls of their office for the first time. Now imagine cloud-based collaboration tools were never invented. There are no cloud storage solutions to safely share files across borders. There are no video meetings, digital whiteboards, or real-time document collaboration tools. There’s no instant messaging or internal message boards. How does business get done? Can the world just completely stop for two years?

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Blog Feature

AIIM Community

AIIM Names Tori Miller Liu Chief Executive Officer

The Association for Intelligent Information Management (AIIM), the world’s leading association dedicated to the information management industry and its practice, announced today that it has appointed Tori Miller Liu as its next Chief Executive Officer, effective December 1, 2022. She replaces Peggy Winton who, earlier this year, announced her decision to step down after serving in this position for seven years.

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Blog Feature

Information Governance

Top 9 Information Governance Tips for 2022

The digital world has changed the way we live our lives. It has also changed the way organizations do business. With so much information being generated, it becomes more difficult for organizations to manage it all and ensure compliance with regulations like GDPR and HIPAA. Information governance helps organizations maintain control of their information while complying with these regulations.

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Blog Feature

Compliance  |  Electronic Records Management (ERM)

JPMorgan’s $200 Million in Fines Ups the Ante for Recordkeeping Violations

Late last year, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced that J.P. Morgan Securities LLC had agreed to pay $125 million to help settle charges of “widespread and longstanding failures by the firm and its employees to maintain and preserve written communications” over the course of several years. On the same day, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”) levied a $75 million fine against J.P. Morgan Securities (“JPMS”), along with two other JPMorgan Chase & Co. (“JPMorgan”) entities, for substantially similar conduct—bringing the combined total penalty involving the JPMorgan parent organization to $200 million.

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Blog Feature

Digital Transformation  |  Intelligent Information Management (IIM)

What Is the Role of Information Management in Customer Experience?

There are two things you should know about me. The first is that I love to eat. I have an appetite that was once described as “alarming.” In my teenage years, I would kick back and devour an entire large pizza in one sitting. As I grew older, I refined my pallet and developed a desire for quality ingredients and a craving for a variety of flavors. The second thing you should know is that I hate to cook.

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Blog Feature

Cloud  |  Content Services

How to Make the Most of Content Services in the Cloud

New cloud-based approaches promise to transform workflow in ways that produce new levels of service, savings, and responsiveness. There are many strategic reasons for moving to the cloud. Organizations around the world have embraced the cloud as a way to fundamentally improve the performance of the business and dramatically improve customer experience.

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Blog Feature

Cloud

5 Recommendations for a Hybrid Cloud and On-Prem Approach

Cloud-based systems and applications are popular across organizations in all industries today and are largely regarded as a powerful platform for process innovation and improved organizational performance. According to the IDG 2021 Cloud Computing Survey, the majority (55%) of organizations are now using more than one public cloud. Cloud adoption has also reached more than two-thirds in every industry. Clearly, cloud technology has now established its predominance. Yet despite rising adoption, not every business has made the jump to the cloud. IDC found that only about 9% of organizations are “cloud-only” and over half (54%) remain mostly on-premises with some cloud-based systems mixed in.

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Blog Feature

Healthcare  |  Intelligent Information Management (IIM)

Information Management in the Not-So-Distant Future of Health Care

I’m at that age when the body starts to go. I now see 100 doctors – no, really, 85 at least. Or so it seems. If I’m not Zooming with my primary care provider, I’m swapping data with a specialist via a phone app or transmitting my blood pressure readings from my remote monitor to the disembodied nurse in my voicemail who chides me with messages if I miss a reading.

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Blog Feature

Digital Transformation

How to Prepare for the Metaverse

From the Australian Open offering fans art ball NFTs with real-time match data to JPMorgan Chase’s tiger-friendly lounge in the blockchain-based world Decentraland, metaverse events are exploding into 2022 as powerful new weapons to engage with people.

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Business Process Management (BPM)  |  Process Improvement

How to Analyze a Business Process

There are some chores I love, many I don’t mind, and a few that sap my will to live. Folding laundry falls into the soul-crushing category. I’ve tried doing it while I watch the Price is Right or rock out to Taylor Swift (yes, she’s my guilty pleasure!), but nothing distracts me from the monotony of that task. And my least favorite part about it has always been trying to match the socks.

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Blog Feature

Data Management

Succeeding at the Game of Work Depends on Excelling at Data Management

Companies are dealing with more data than ever before. In a complex IT environment, the challenge of maximizing the value of that data can be daunting. Everyone in an organization wants to excel, but many do not have holistic approaches for measuring the ongoing status and enhancement of their business data. Not doing so can result in lower overall company performance, incomplete or incorrect data to drive decisions, and undue stress, driving lower overall employee satisfaction.

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Blog Feature

Artificial Intelligence (AI)  |  Content Services  |  Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

How Content Services Are Enabling the Digital Transformation of Electric Utilities

Electric utilities in the United States are a major source of CO2 – they created 1.55 billion metric tons of it in 2020. This sector vies only with transportation in producing the most pollution on the planet. And according to the US Energy Information Agency, consumption is expected to grow by 50% by the year 2050.

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Blog Feature

AIIM Community

Always Leave a Party When you're Having Fun

At a recent holiday gathering (of triple-vaxxed friends/family), I was reminded of advice from my very elegant and wise grandmother: “Always leave a party when you’re having fun.” Since I’m still having a blast at the AIIM party, now is the ideal time for me to make my way to the exit, passing the presidential baton enroute. That’s right. I promised myself that I would serve only two, 3-year terms in the CEO role, yet here I am, happily beginning the third. I believe in executive term limits, so I had best be honoring my own vow.

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AIIM Community

AIIM Announces New Directors for the 2022 Board

Two new directors elected by members of the association

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Blog Feature

Information Governance

How to Get Executive Support for Your Next Information Governance Initiative

Back in 2017, I called up a few of the information governance friends I’d made through the AIIM Community to better understand the challenges they were up against. As we engaged in a bit of Socratic dialogue, it became clear to us all that the perceived role of information governance had to shift from a singular focus on risk and cost reduction. If they don't, they will NEVER change the status of information management within their organizations. The key to this transformation is aligning information management decisions with business decisions.

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Blog Feature

Intelligent Information Management (IIM)

AIIM's Information Management Training - Cost, Options, and FAQs

In several posts, we’ve talked about professional development options for information management professionals and provided guidance on how to determine whether a particular course or certification is a good fit. For the most part, we’ve stayed away from blogging about AIIM's training for two reasons. First, we wanted these blog posts to be informative and insightful, rather than be perceived as self-aggrandizement. And second, we figured that most people reading these posts would already know AIIM’s offerings. It turns out that that’s not the case. We regularly get questions about AIIM training – what course is right for a particular person, role, or circumstance, what the courses cover, what they cost, etc. So we thought it might be of value to do an overview of AIIM’s training offerings.

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Blog Feature

AIIM Community

Everything You Need to Know About AIIM+

I’ll save you from having to read another contrived word about how difficult the last year was. And it was, without a doubt, difficult. Instead, I want to focus on one of my favorite positives to come out of the pandemic – the “Covid Hobby” phenomenon.

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Blog Feature

Information Governance

Information Governance – 3 Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

What is Information Governance, and Why is it Important? There are many benefits to constructing an Information Governance program plan. Generally, regulatory compliance or litigation activities are at the top of the list and often spur the creation of the IG program itself, but that's just the start of the list of IG benefits.

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Blog Feature

Electronic Records Management (ERM)  |  Retention

Data Disposition: What is it and why should it be part of your data retention policy?

What happens when information comes to the end of its lifecycle and no longer remains relevant, useful, or valuable? Or, what about when a record’s retention schedule comes to an end? If we keep everything forever, we’ll quickly run into issues like storage costs and other negatives like findability and increased risks. There’s a better way - read on as we explore the importance of Disposition.

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Blog Feature

Digital Transformation

What are the Common Digital Transformation Checkpoints?

Digital Transformation and Intelligent Information Management Here at AIIM, we talk a lot about Digital Transformation and its link with the practice of Intelligent Information Management. But, what exactly is the link between IIM and Digital Transformation? We explore this topic thoroughly in this previous post, but in summary: Every organization is on – or should be on – a Digital Transformation journey. At the heart of this Transformation journey is the drive toward 1) understanding, anticipating, and redefining internal and external customer experiences. This primary driver depends on other key transformative aspirations such as 2) business agility/innovation, 3) operational excellence, and 4) automated compliance/governance. These drivers require information – in a leverageable form. Today, that’s not always an easy task as the volume, velocity, and variety of information that most organizations need to manage, store, and protect now exceeds their ability to even marginally keep pace with big content challenges. That’s where IIM comes in. This rising tide of information chaos and confusion is creating a demand for new information management practices that extend beyond traditional Enterprise Content Management. AIIM calls this Intelligent Information Management (IIM).

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Enterprise Search

Intelligent Search – Strategies to Find What You Need

Regardless of your industry, managing information intelligently requires the ability to find, store, and use information effectively and flexibly in order to get good results. It all boils down to: Finding the right information when you need it. Storing important information in a secure and compliant way. Using that information in ways that matter.

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AIIM on Air  |  Digital Transformation

[Podcast] Doing Agile Right - Transformation Without Chaos

We hear a lot about "Agile" as a way to manage change and spur innovation. But what exactly is Agile? And how can we use it to make a difference? That was the topic of our AIIM On Air interview with Darrell Rigby. Darrell leads Bain & Company's Global Innovation and Agile practices and is the co-author of "Doing Agile Right." He's a frequent speaker and writer on innovation and Agile, and has appeared on CNBC, CNN, and Bloomberg, and has had his research published in Harvard Business Review, the Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times.

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Paperless Office

How to Eliminate Paper Processes

Despite the proven operational improvements to be gain by going paperless, paper is still prevalent in too many core business processes today including loan applications, insurance claims, and customer onboarding. After last year's mad dash to accommodate distributed workers and work places, the reticence to digitize paper processes is decreasing. 70% of AIIM survey respondents indicate that they plan to expand their efforts to encourage and support more digitally-born documents this year. And, 41% said they plan to fully embrace electronic forms. In today's post, we'll take a holistic look at eliminating paper from your business processes by exploring: The Benefits of Paperless Processes How Today's Organizations Are Prioritizing Key Considerations for Getting Started Steps to Eliminate Paper

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Digital Transformation  |  Intelligent Information Management (IIM)

How Well Does Your Information Strategy Align with Your Business Goals?

In both our personal and professional lives, the amount of information we deal with on a daily basis is growing exponentially. At the same time, the variety of this information is evolving -- audio files, video files, and more. The cummulative effect? Information Chaos! For many organizations, information is largely viewed as an achilles heel that must be tamed and controlled. Efforts to do so have largely been focused on reducing cost and risk. However, if information is the currency that fuels digital transformation, organizations cannot continue down the path of viewing information management decisions solely through a tactical cost-minimization filter. In a digital age, the everyday decisions that organizations make about information must become strategic business decisions and must also consider information as a strategic enabler.

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Privacy

Digital Ethics: What's Your Plan?

We've all been there, adding in our personal information online to complete a form, make a purchase, or sign up for an offer, and before we click the submission button, we think, "Is this information safe? How might it be used?" We ask ourselves these questions more and more as we continue to grow and expand our online experiences using our personal information. But, whether we realize it or not, it's more than just a matter of safety. As you'll discover in this post, this exchange of information can also be a matter of ethics.

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Information Governance  |  Sharepoint and Office 365

MS Teams Information Governance - A Checklist for Success

For millions of Microsoft 365 users, a substantial portion of the organizational knowledge is created, shared, and stored in SharePoint, Exchange email, or OneDrive. Teams offers yet another way to share content with colleagues and even customers, storing files in SharePoint and OneDrive separately. Organizations must oversee this activity across multiple jurisdictions. The information flow is complicated, and the governance implications are substantial.

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AIIM on Air  |  Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

[Podcast] The Care and Feeding of Bots

There is a lot of excitement and interest in Robotic Process Automation (RPA) these days, and for good reason. Intelligent automation helps improve flexibility, response and service; all distinguishing capabilities in the age of digital transformation. As a result, business owners and executives from all industries are taking notice. According to one AIIM research study, 55% of organizations plan to implement some form of robotic process automation in the next 6-12 months. Over 80% say they plan on automating over the next 1-2 years.

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Human Resources

Overcoming Information Overload in Human Resources

A Look at Information Overload It’s no secret that organizations today are swamped by information. According to AIIM, organizations expect the amount of information they must manage to increase by 4.5x in the next 18 months. Add to this the massive and immediate shift to remote working in 2020 and the impacts of information overload compound exponentially. It’s hard to avoid information overload nowadays. And the quantity and speed of that information coming at us is often more than we can handle. The impacts are felt in every aspect of doing business today; two-thirds of office workers say that the volume of data they must manage negatively affects their job.

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Document Management  |  Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

Document Processing Vs. Robotic Process Automation

The Difference Between Intelligent Document Processing and RPA — Or Is There One? For many businesses, content and data capture tools are highly sought out, particularly in the banking and insurance sectors. With so many different types of documents required to operate and adhere to compliances, the need for capturing data accurately and quickly, especially unstructured data, is ever growing. As a result, businesses are looking at sophisticated data capture solutions to achieve this. For a while, the biggest player was intelligent document processing (IDP), which used to be known as “capture.” However, now robotic process automation (RPA) is matching the features IDP tools offer and throwing their hat into the data capture ring.

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Automation

How To Estimate Your Document Automation Potential

Understanding the Key Factors that Affect How Much Document Automation You Can Achieve When the word “automation” is brought up in a conversation, most people think of something that is completely handed over to machines. And that scenario can be true if the tasks involve very straightforward, highly repetitive work with little variance. Think of processes like provisioning an email account for a new employee and you’ll get the idea. When it comes to automation of document tasks, while it is relatively easy to convert paper into images or to make resulting images of documents searchable, it is quite another thing to take unstructured document-based information and comprehensibly convert it into highly reliable, structured, and usable data. All of a sudden, aspects of a project or organization’s requirements that appear to be very straightforward begin to take on more ambiguity when it comes to assessing just how much automation can be achieved.

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Sharepoint and Office 365

Tips for Maximizing Your Sharepoint Investment

With SharePoint now included in Enterprise Microsoft 365 subscriptions, it is now more accessible than ever before. It is tempting for organizations to just jump right in and start setting it up without much forethought. SharePoint, however, is a sophisticated content management system. As a leader in the content management space, it offers a robust set of capabilities. That depth and breadth of functionality works best with considerate planning up front for how you’re going to use it. SharePoint also has deep integrations throughout the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Learning how different services and applications work together can mean the difference between a successful implementation and a stagnant one.

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Digital Transformation

How Are Remote Work and New Technologies Impacting Information Management?

The shift to remote work has significantly impacted how organizations manage information. We sat down recently with Adam Storch, Vice President of Business Solutions, Micro Strategies, to discuss the effect advancing technology and the move to hybrid workplaces have had on information management.

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Information Security

Proactively Protecting Your Sensitive Information for Remote Workers

The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic has, almost overnight, forced many organizations to modify their business practices and transition to a remote workforce. Of course, the first focus during this transition is deploying the connectivity and infrastructure necessary to support your remote workers. Don’t, however, lose sight of the fact that information scattered across a dispersed workforce can significantly raise the risk of a data breach or other security concerns.

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Collaboration

Empower and Secure your Hybrid Workplace

The COVID-19 pandemic crisis has changed most everything. Technology, social, and cultural disruptions have forced organizations to shift rapidly, expanding remote work capabilities. As we approach the post-pandemic era, a new normal has emerged in workstyles. Businesses now look to foster and enable a hybrid workplace. With this massive transition underway, many organizations struggle to maximize productivity and resilience while building a seamless and secure digital workplace.

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Email Management  |  Metadata

Supercharge Your Search Accuracy with Auto-Applied Email Metadata Upon Ingestion

As the amount of data entering the organization proliferates, and the amount of content with business value (deemed a “record” in many cases) also increases, organizations everywhere are struggling with a massive information overload problem. Content is running rampant and sprawling, and records are being captured improperly, making discoverability and the resulting value of that information significantly lower.

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Capture and Imaging

Does Your Content Drive Organizational Value?

If you’ve been paying attention to the research we conduct and the educational information we share, you know that AIIM describes Intelligent Information Management (IIM) as all the things you want to do with, or get from, your organization’s information. We break these up into five key categories of actions or aspirations: Creating and Capturing Information Extracting Intelligence from Information Digitalizing Core Business Processes Automating Governance and Compliance Implementing an Information Management Solution

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Process Automation

Experienced Users Share Their Best Tips for Process Automation

There are still many organizations that could benefit from the adoption of process automation technologies like Business Process Management (BPM), Robotic Process Automation (RPA), and Case Management. In fact, according to AIIM research, the overall adoption of these technologies is around 30-40% of organizations, skewed toward larger organizations with more than 1,000 employees. That leaves roughly 60-70% of organizations that make up potential users. To help these potential users, we surveyed experienced users of BPM, RPA, and/or Case Management technologies for their best advice for getting started.

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Process Automation

How to Automate a Process: A Handy Guide for the Information Professional

The volume, velocity, and variety of information that most organizations need to manage, store, and protect now exceeds their ability to even marginally keep pace manually. This rising tide of information requires thoughtful strategies for automation to leverage its true power. To see what really drives the push to automation, AIIM surveyed over 260+ information professionals (click here to get a Free copy of the report). Here’s a look at why the AIIM Community cares about process automation.

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AIIM on Air  |  Artificial Intelligence (AI)

[Podcast] The Future of AI is Today

The notion of Artificial Intelligence has pervaded both the business world and popular culture. And, while Hollywood often portrays AI in a future world of smart robots with super-human characteristics, the truth is that AI technologies are already at work fueling important changes in the way business is conducted every day.

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Sharepoint and Office 365

Microsoft 365 vs. Office 365 - Getting the Terminology Right

In last week's article, we talked about the changing role of M365 within organizations, how it is governed, and how it connects with other content management solutions. Given its rapid evolution and adoption – particularly with the maturation of Office 365 and Cloud versions of SharePoint, we probably should have made a few points about brand terminology. With similar names, "Microsoft 365" and "Office 365" are sometimes used synonymously by users. They are actually different. What's the difference? Let's take a look: The confusion may have started in 2017 with Microsoft's release of Microsoft 365. This new offering bundled a group of their existing products under one license. One of the products included in the bundle is Office 365...you can see where terminology confusion set in. Let's clear things up with the infographic below:

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Sharepoint and Office 365

A Transition to Collaborative Content Services

As late as 2010, many end-users and solution providers viewed SharePoint as useful for project groups and document sharing – but more of an interesting tangent to the world of content management than “real” ECM. However, standalone ECM solutions at that time came at a very high cost. Many of these ECM solutions were built for high-volume scanning/capture applications and priced accordingly. So what about those who couldn't afford that investment? What about the middle market masses?

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Content Migration

Content Migration - Evaluating Your Options

The amount of data organizations must manage today is truly mind-boggling. Research shows that there are 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created each and every day. During the last two years alone 90% of the data in the world was generated. It’s no wonder that many organizations struggle to simply keep pace. And moving mountains of data from older legacy systems to modern cloud-based repositories can seem out of reach for most, regardless of the potential advantages of modernization. But what can you do when you need to migrate? If leaving your data in place is not an option, and moving it makes you lose sleep at night, you can quickly feel overwhelmed by the chaos. Thankfully, there are some new approaches to data migration that may provide an answer. Which is the best approach for your project? Let's take a look at three common approaches to migration to compare them.

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Electronic Records Management (ERM)

Directive M-19-21: What it is and How to Achieve Compliance

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) set forth the government-wide policy M-19-21 as a directive to progress how government records are managed. Read on to learn what this directive is, who it impacts, and seven factors necessary to achieve compliance. What Is M-19-21? Who Does M-19-21 Impact? When Is The M-19-21 Deadline? 7 Factors Necessary to Achieve Compliance

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AIIM on Air  |  Digital Transformation

[Podcast] What is the Future of Work?

What is the future of work? That’s hard to say. But one thing seems certain: Disruption lies ahead. Driven by innovations in technology, shifting business strategies, and evolving definitions of success, the workplace is changing fast. As the adoption of things like process automation, AI, and Machine Learning continue to accelerate, so will the pace of change in the workplace. Indeed, with the continuing trend toward remote work, many of us may not have a workplace at all. As a result, we must all reconsider how jobs are designed and work to adapt and learn for future growth.

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Knowledge Management

How to Leverage Your Organization's Expertise

Knowledge is power - both in our personal lives and work lives. But, in our organizations, the management of this knowledge is one of the most crucial yet overlooked aspects of workplace progress. When employees fail to get access to the knowledge necessary for completing their tasks, the organization can suffer. In fact, there are many benefits to using a practice called Knowledge Management to purposefully manage your organization's knowledge assets and ensure access. Today, we'll be exploring an aspect of Knowledge Management called Expertise Location - the idea, in a nutshell, is to manage knowledge by identifying experts on a particular topic and then leveraging that expertise in support of business goals and objectives. Every company has experts on different topics, and Expertise Location is a way to formalize and easily identify and track where to go to leverage this expertise. Ready? Let's jump in!

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Knowledge Management

How To Organize Your Company’s Knowledge Assets In 6 Simple Steps

The practice of Knowledge Management carries many benefits for your organization, including increased efficiency, better decision-making, improved customer service, and more. With these benefits in mind, let’s get into specific knowledge management tactics you can use to maximize the use of your company’s knowledge assets - six steps you can start working through today! Step 1: Determine What you Need to Know Step 2: Categorize Your Knowledge Assets Step 3: Have Clear Corporate Data Security Policies Step 4: Promote Knowledge Sharing Step 5: Secure Valuable Knowledge Step 6: Get the Right Technology

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Knowledge Management

What are the Benefits of Knowledge Management?

Quick question: What’s your business’s most prized asset? Is it a tangible asset, like a high-rise building in an upmarket area? Is it owning groundbreaking high-tech tools? What about your inventory, cash, or cash equivalents? In today’s knowledge economy, it's knowledge assets that are vital to a company’s growth. When you think about it, knowledge assets are more important than tangible assets. They can make or break a business. Sadly, many brands ignore knowledge asset management. In this article, we'll explore the benefits of using a strategic practice called Knowledge Management to purposefully manage your organization's knowledge assets. Let’s begin:

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AIIM on Air  |  Intelligent Information Management (IIM)

[Podcast] The Art of the Possible

The phrase "the art of the possible" can mean different things to different people. For those of us in the information management business, it has come to mean "achieving what we can (possible), rather than what we want (often impossible)." For me, it's an optimistic view of the future rather than a fearful acknowledgment of our challenges and difficulties. The "art" part is where the magic happens; as we allow ourselves to explore the boundaries of what information technology permits us to achieve and how those capabilities move the needle in terms of transformation, innovation, and organizational performance; indeed pushing back those boundaries with a new, more forward-looking approach.

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Intelligent Information Management (IIM)

Rethinking Acceptable Use Polices

A staple of many Information Technology (IT) policy suites is the Acceptable Use Policy (AUP), intended to govern what people working in the organization can and cannot do with the technology we provide them. IIM professionals and consultants push to have these kinds of policies in place, and countless templates and best practices are available on the Internet to use as a starting point if we don't have one already.

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Knowledge Management

Tacit Knowledge Vs. Explicit Knowledge

This post is focused on the following topics. You may click these links to jump to a specific section:

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AIIM on Air  |  Artificial Intelligence (AI)

[Podcast] How Will Humanity Survive the AI Revolution?

How will humanity survive the AI revolution? Simple—we become superhuman. That is the subject of our new AIIM On Air interview with author and researcher Alex Bates.

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Intelligent Information Management (IIM)

Successful Information Management: What's Standing in Your Way?

One would think that the rapid pace of changing technology is the primary struggle for organizations on their journey to transforming into a truly digital organization. However, based on our recent state of the intelligent information management industry research, that is simply not the case. At the top of the list of true obstacles that organizations face is money – "lack of budget and resources" (26%). This is followed by a "lack of a true strategy for managing information assets" (24%), and "an immature culture" (18%). Here's a look at the data from the research:

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Cloud

Build a Cloud-First Content Management Strategy in Three Simple Steps

Global research and advisory firm, Gartner, predicts that by 2024 more than 45% of IT spending will shift from legacy on-premises solutions to the cloud. Cloud infrastructure spending is expected to jump from $63 billion in 2020 to $81 billion by 2022. The cloud race was well underway in 2020 when COVID reared its unfortunate head and sent businesses still on the cloud adoption starting blocks into a frenzy. Those who had already adopted and implemented a cloud-first strategy sat smugly in the stands. The perks of a cloud-first approach for data management have been well documented: unified, content-services platforms accessed anytime, anywhere by empowered employees leading to improved productivity and reduced operational costs.

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AIIM on Air  |  Capture and Imaging

[Podcast] Content Integration to Unlock Performance

Our ability to intelligently capture information in an automated and consistent way, share it with teams, customers and partners, and integrate that content into business processes is a core element of Intelligent Information Management. Indeed, this is the “on-ramp” to the process improvements using information to drive organizational performance.

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AIIM Conference

Revealing the Invisible

As the AIIM team and I put the finishing touches on AIIM21: a galactic digital experience, our attention is laser-focused on the educational content we bring to this year's participants. We take our upskilling and uplifting responsibilities pretty seriously around here, believing that we have an outsized obligation to move the industry and the community up the business value chain. We know that Information Management leaders of the future rely on AIIM for knowledge and insight. In guiding and prepping the event partners and educators, I revisited an article that AIIM21 keynote speaker, Tom Koulopoulos wrote six years ago. Tom is no stranger to AIIM, having presented at our 2015 conference in San Diego. Here's a picture of him from that event: In the article, Tom offers five predictions for business and technology in the twenty years hence. As we welcome him back to the conference keynote stage, let's take a quick trip back in time to revisit Tom's original forecast from 2015.

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Intelligent Information Management (IIM)

Five Steps to Win the Battle Against Information Chaos in 2021

We surveyed members of the AIIM Community as a part of our yearly look at the state of the industry. The numbers are in— 46% of respondents graded their organizations as poor or needs improvement when it comes to dealing with the rising tide of information chaos. Even more alarming, senior executives feel more confident in their efforts than the reality would suggest. Here's a look at how the AIIM Community self-assessed on how well the strategies for business and technology align in their organization. For fun and visual effect, we've created this 2021 Informational Professionals' report card to present the results.

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AIIM Conference  |  Privacy

Protecting or Posturing: What's Acceptable in New Data Privacy Practices

Technology and apps that are helping to prevent illness, accidents, and crime also happen to collect a vast amount of personal data. Similarly, some of the video conferencing and collaboration platforms that we knowledge workers are all too familiar with are now using artificial intelligence to recognize participants and their behaviors. Are these new features a boost to efficiency and convenience or simply the latest attempt by providers to push the boundaries between convenience and intrusion?

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Document Management

What are the Best Document Management Capabilities?

Document Management is the use of a software application to track digital documents from creation through approval and publication. It serves in many ways to apply a formal governance framework to the document creation and collaborative editing processes.

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Digital Signatures

Digital Signatures 101 – Drivers, Barriers, and User Research

In a truly all-digital world, there would be no need for printers – or scanners or document couriers. Documents would never need to be printed, and processes would run smoothly from all-electronic input to all-electronic output. This may already the reality for some leading companies, but for most organizations, forms, contracts, agreements, and signoffs are still rooted in wet ink on paper. In this post, we’ll examine the importance of signatures for various organizations - particularly for process sign-offs and professional authorizations, look at the drivers for electronic signing, the issues that might be preventing adoption, and look at how the AIIM Community views digital signatures. Sound good? Great, let’s dive right in!

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Capture and Imaging

What is Multichannel Capture?

We’ve covered the importance of Information Capture on the blog before and explored how capture represents the first step in the information lifecycle. In this step, we “capture” or gather information into our business ecosystem to store, manage, protect, and ultimately it use for business value. It ALL starts with capture. But, the value of a document is in its content, not whether it was received as an email attachment, captured via a smart phone or tablet, or scanned using a multifunction device. Therefore, multichannel capture takes into account that your business likely has multiple channels or sources of information flowing in and out of your business. As we will discover together, these channels often need to be treated individually, and your Information Capture strategy must take into account the differences from channel to channel.

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AIIM on Air  |  Artificial Intelligence (AI)  |  Cloud

[Podcast] How AI and the Next Generation of the Cloud will Radically Transform Business

The notion of Artificial Intelligence has pervaded both the info and tech worlds. Indeed, it's difficult to have a discussion or a webinar without the topics of AI and Robotic Process Automation coming up. And while it might be tempting to dismiss the implications as something from a Hollywood movie of a future world populated by smart robots with super-human characteristics, the truth is that these technologies are already at work today, fueling important changes in the way we do business.

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Electronic Records Management (ERM)

Records Vs. Non-Records

In another post this week, we took a look at the first step in the information lifecycle – information capture. We not only talked about the importance of capture, but we also talked about what you should be capturing and what you should avoid capturing. Today, I’d like to dig a little deeper into that discussion and talk about how to distinguish between a record and a non-record. This is an important distinction to make when developing your Information Capture strategy. If you are new to records management, some of the following may need a little getting used to, especially if you associate ‘anything that is in a file’ with the idea of ‘record’. In fact, many items that people keep, or file, are definitely not records. Let's start out with some examples of what is typically considered a record and what is typically NOT considered a record.

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Capture and Imaging

What to Capture Vs. What NOT to Capture

Many organizations have an obligation to maintain the information they create and receive as part of regular business activities and to ensure that the information is secured and maintained in official filing systems. But, with an endless amount of information flowing in and out of your business on a daily basis - how do you determine what to capture and what to avoid? Not all information is equal, and capturing everything could actually have a more negative impact on your business, but we'll address this later in the post. This post will help you develop an Information Capture strategy that fits your business' needs and avoids the common pitfalls.

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Content Migration

8 Tips to Create a Data Migration Strategy

Migrating to a new system or moving to a new platform? Then you’ll definitely need to create a successful data migration strategy to protect your valuable data and achieve the desired results. In this article, we’ll take a look at several ways to migrate your data. They will allow you to build a successful strategy, prevent data loss, and make everything as efficient as possible.

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Metadata

How to Build a Metadata Plan in Five Steps

Metadata resides at the center of many of the essential aspects of content management. In addition to helping organize and classify content, Metadata enables good findability, can trigger workflow and transactional processes, reveals document usage patterns and history, and helps establish retention and disposition events. So far in our exploration of Metadata, we've answered some of the big questions already, including: What is Metadata? What is the business value of Metadata? How do I develop a Metadata strategy? Today, we'll be taking the next step and exploring how to build your Metadata plan. Let's get started!

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Metadata

How to Develop a Metadata Strategy

What’s the Importance of a Metadata Strategy? Many organizations use metadata in ways that provide significant business value. Every system uses metadata to store and retrieve data. But in too many organizations, every system uses similar but different metadata, with the result that different data structures and approaches make information harder to find and manage, not easier. Take a simple example of an employee name: In one system, it’s “first name last name.” In another, it’s “last name, (comma) first name.” And in still another, it’s two fields: “First name” and “Last name.”

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Metadata

What is Metadata and Why is it Important?

Information needs context, and we need to provide that context in a way that doesn't burden users but instead supports them. This means we need to take full advantage of recognition and analytics technologies to streamline and automate how we develop that context. One such tool is Metadata. Metadata offers significant benefits in terms of understanding information in new ways and in being able to leverage that intelligence to drive innovation and the customer experience.

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Capture and Imaging  |  Electronic Records Management (ERM)

What is Information Capture? Definition, Purpose, and Value

To succeed on the Digital Transformation journey, requires a strategy, planning, and the design of a better information ecosystem - what we refer to as Intelligent Information Management (IIM). The first step on this journey is to get all of your information into the information ecosystem. This is a practice called Capture. Let’s take a deeper look at this first step of digital transformation.

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AIIM on Air

[Podcast] The Upside and Downside of Recommendation Engines

Have you ever wondered how companies like Amazon and Netflix recommend content based on our past viewing or purchasing? Recommendation engines are fueled by techniques in Machine Learning and AI. There are many benefits to consumers and companies, but what are the dangers and downsides of recommendation engines? That is the subject of my newest AIIM On Air interview with Michael Schrage.

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Content Migration  |  Electronic Records Management (ERM)

What Does a Modern Information Infrastructure Look Like?

Information has transformed in a big way over the past few decades, with some of the most significant changes coming in just the last five years. Year over year, information has seen a dramatic increase in both value and volume. The advancement of new technology has transitioned much of this from paper to digital – which presents its own set of new challenges regarding compliance, access, and protection. These changes all add up and have had a profound impact on how we create, manage, store, and access information today. Here at AIIM, we see this as an opportunity. We believe this means the practice of managing information and records can no longer be seen as solely an exercise for compliance – it needs to go beyond compliance and a key component in your business strategy.

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Electronic Records Management (ERM)  |  Intelligent Information Management (IIM)

The Gulf Between IM and IT

How many times have you left a joint meeting of members of your organization's Information Management (IM) and IT teams thinking that everyone was on the same page, only to find out a few days later that the decisions your colleagues in the "other" unit took away were totally different from what your unit did? It happens more often than we think. And when it does happen, we should consider ourselves lucky if it takes only a few days for the inconsistent understanding to surface. The tough cases are those when the misunderstanding doesn't come to light for weeks or even months.

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Electronic Records Management (ERM)

What is the Value of Records and Information Management?

What is the value of Records and Information Management? To help answer that, take a quick mental inventory of all the technologies your organization utilizes that interact in some way with organizational information. Think about technology like email, personal computers, the web, smart phones, social media, etc. Think about all of the information captured, stored, and created using those technologies.

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AIIM on Air  |  Cloud

[Podcast] Remote Working - Start Small, Grow Big

The workplace in 2021 will demand a different set of skills. Now more than ever, organizations need to embrace disruption as a springboard for competitive advantage and adopt new ways of working that invigorate organizational performance. The needed capabilities include the ability to leverage remote work as an advantage, increase information agility, and drive business growth despite these challenging times.

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Electronic Records Management (ERM)

What are the Drivers of Electronic Records Management (ERM)?

Records can be vital to the business. That means the management of records is something that needs great care, attention, and planning. Although not a new concept, the game has somewhat changed in recent years as the way records are created and what is considered a record has evolved. Virtually all new records are created electronically today – they are what we call “born digital.” Whether a record is in the format of a letter, an email, fax, a web, or other transaction, the chances are today that it originally was created with one or more computers. This is a situation that has crept up on us relatively fast and unnoticed by some organizations in records management terms at least.

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AIIM Community  |  Change Management

Change Management - Still the Top Problem Facing End Users in 2021?

The new year always brings with it a handful of important questions around the AIIM Community. What are the key trends in information management? What are the top challenges to overcome? More importantly, what are the best practices and strategies to overcome them?

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CRM  |  Intelligent Information Management (IIM)

Five Tips to Leverage Information for Better Customer Experience

Twenty years ago, the average consumer used two touchpoints when buying an item, and only 7% regularly used more than four. Today consumers use an average of almost six touchpoints, with nearly 50% regularly using more than four. (Marketing Week) And that’s not including the after purchase touchpoints including, invoicing, billing, shipping, service and support, and feedback. With constantly changing customer experience expectations, it is necessary to put customers at the center of a multichannel strategy rather than letting each line of business (LOB) in an organization decide the communication touchpoint and channel. In fact, 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a great, holistic customer experience, and the more expensive the item, the more they are willing to pay. (PwC) The opposite is also true. In another survey of 15,000 consumers, it was found that 1 in 3 customers will leave a brand they love after just one bad experience, while 93% would completely abandon a company after two or three negative interactions. (PwC)

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AIIM on Air  |  Digital Transformation

[Podcast] Process Adaptability and Information Access are Key for Transformation

I was so pleased to speak with Jason Burian, VP of Product Development at Knowledge Lake, in this episode of AIIM On Air. As companies look to 2021 and beyond and start crafting new strategies and methodologies, it is important to consider those factors and conditions that will most effectively drive organizational performance. Jason discusses the key aspects of process adaptability and information access and how they will influence our success.

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Blog Feature

AIIM Conference

Take a Look Inside Our First Virtual Conference

"How do we translate an interactive in-person conference experience into a virtual experience?" This was the big question that immediately hit me at exactly at 5:00PM on March 5th, 2020. I remember the moment – we had just closed off a fantastic week with the AIIM Tribe in Dallas, Texas, for The AIIM Conference 2020. I've been leading the events team to produce and coordinate The AIIM Conference for a long time. It's not unusual for us to begin planning for the next year immediately following the event. But, generally, we're looking for awesome new conference features or looking for charities with strong messages to build into the agenda as a part of AIIM Gives Back. This year, the focus was different. We knew at that point that AIIM21 would be digital, so the months that followed would be a full-on research assault to find the absolute BEST way to take everything that the AIIM Tribe has come to know and love about our in-person conference to the virtual platform.

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Blog Feature

AIIM on Air  |  Change Management

[Podcast] Making Large-Scale Change Happen

The workplace in 2021 will demand a different set of skills. Now more than ever, organizations need to embrace disruption as a springboard for competitive advantage and adopt new ways of working that invigorate organizational performance. But making the transition isn't just about the technology involved; success requires the ability to effectively manage change itself.

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Blog Feature

GDPR  |  Privacy

Four Steps to Support Compliant Data Transfers Without Privacy Shield

The recent Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) Schrems II ruling, which invalidated the longstanding U.S.-EU Privacy Shield framework, has created a wave of uncertainty for the legal industry. Ever since the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor framework was retired in 2015 as a result of Schrems I, lawyers have faced challenges in ensuring the legality of transferring data between the EU and U.S. in multi-national litigation and investigations. For the last five years, Privacy Shield has been central to alleviating that burden. Now, lawyers are left wondering what’s next and whether their current standard contractual clauses (SCCs) for data transfers will remain viable. And if not, what options are left?

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Blog Feature

AIIM Conference  |  Digital Transformation

The AIIM Conference 2021 - Now Boarding Info Pros

We're so excited to announce that registration for The AIIM Conference 2021 for records and information professionals is now live!

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Blog Feature

Collaboration

Knowledge Sharing: 5 Strategies to Share Knowledge In the Workplace

Knowledge management is one of the most crucial yet overlooked aspects of workplace progress. When employees fail to get access to the knowledge necessary for completing their tasks, the organization suffers. Knowledge sharing in the workplace can increase productivity, social interaction, and trust among the team. It's great for nurturing the organization's knowledge bank so everyone can access it even as people come and go. Here are five strategies you can use to share knowledge in the workplace.

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Blog Feature

AIIM on Air  |  Intelligent Information Management (IIM)

[Podcast] IIM in 2021 and Beyond

The workplace in 2021 will demand a different set of skills. Now more than ever, organizations need to embrace disruption as a springboard for competitive advantage and adopt new ways of working that invigorate organizational performance.

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Blog Feature

Collaboration  |  Information Governance  |  Privacy

Work Remotely Without Compromising Your Data

With the new year in full swing, there's a lot of conversation around what comes next and what 2020's impact will mean for 2021. IT teams, specifically, are working to understand how to get a grip on content sprawl in the era of remote work. A recent study commissioned by Egnyte surveyed 400 IT leaders to understand how COVID-19 has impacted businesses’ ability to maintain data security and governance with a distributed workforce.

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Blog Feature

AIIM Conference  |  Digital Transformation

Digital Transformation: The Song Remains the Same

Leading brands don’t change their brand story. They perfect by telling it over and over again. What’s AIIM’s story? We believe that information is an asset. Information provides value to organizations. We want to change the perception of what managing it looks like. Ultimately, it’s about moving records and information management from a perceived cost of doing business, to a key competitive differentiator and driver of your digital transformation. At the heart of this transformation is a drive to understand and anticipate our customers and provide them with the best experience we can. True digital transformation leaders make it easy to do business with them.

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Blog Feature

AIIM Conference  |  Digital Transformation

Opportunity in the Midst of Change

I don’t need to tell you that this year has been like no other we’ve ever experienced. The confluence of events, tensions, and loss has significantly disrupted our personal and professional lives. Even among AIIM members, we have witnessed the toll that these disruptions have taken on mental health, job security, and organizational productivity.

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Blog Feature

Low-code Development Platform  |  Process Automation

How to Automate Business Processes On a Budget

Why Business Automation Matters Business process management is an essential part of a growing business. Without it, organizations could face low customer satisfaction, lack of communication, and a higher chance of error. By letting computers take care of menial, repetitive day-to-day tasks, automation can save businesses money and time. Without the human component in handling data, there is a lower chance of error. And with the reduced hours of labor, employees can concentrate on delivering more important and fulfilling tasks. Workflow efficiency through automation can generate more revenue while decreasing expenditures, giving businesses stability, and saving them money. The most important benefit of business workflow management is the increase in customer satisfaction. The time saved through automation can be invested in improving their experience. Faster task completions, more attentive staff, and greater resources are always appreciated by customers. Higher revenues and faster business growth can be achieved through automation.

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Blog Feature

Collaboration  |  Sharepoint and Office 365

Making the Best of Working from Home

You know that saying, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade”? It’s something I try to live by. I’m a self-proclaimed eternal optimist and always try to look for the positive in everything. If you do it often enough, you’ll soon find that there is always a positive way to look at things. It won’t always turn the bad completely good, but it will always put a positive spin on it and make it easier to handle. Finding even a glimmer of hope through positivity can be enough to pull you through. This year, life didn’t just give us lemons; it basically gave us a sea of lemons. The unexpected COVID crisis hit and changed…well, everything. In business, organizations were forced to rethink how they view remote work, remote workers, and the systems used to support them. And for the majority, we were unprepared: Only 34% of the organizations surveyed reported that their organization was “very prepared” for remote work prior to COVID.* Today we’re going to look at this overwhelming sea of life’s lemons and see if we can’t squeeze out at least a glass of lemonade!

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Blog Feature

AIIM on Air

[Podcast] Best of 2020 - A Special Year-End Episode

Over the past several years, I've had the pleasure of interviewing hundreds of guests for AIIM On Air. It never fails to impress me that the level of knowledge and leadership among AIIM members and supporters is the best in the business. Each month we cover a variety of topics – from the latest in automation and innovation, to pressing and emerging challenges and opportunities that tell the story of the current state of IIM today.

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Blog Feature

Change Management

What are the Principles of Change Management?

Change Management Principles Why do so many organizations struggle with implementing change? Is it bad tactical plans? Poor strategy? A lack of focus from senior leadership? Many times, it boils down to people – the human side of change. Careful consideration and planning for your company’s culture, values, people, and behaviors could help separate your project from the majority that fail. An intimate understanding of the human side of your change can be achieved through Change Management. Today we're going to look at the principles of Change Management as they are covered in AIIM's training. Some excerpts from the training will even be used to help in explaining these principles.

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Blog Feature

AIIM on Air  |  Accounting and Finance  |  Low-code Development Platform

[Podcast] Low Code Drives Rapid Change for Financial Services

It’s no secret that the continuing coronavirus pandemic has disrupted businesses everywhere, and the financial services industry is no exception. Indeed, the financial services industry is at a tipping point—either disrupt or get disrupted. Even before Covid-19, many areas within banking and capital markets were already experiencing serious existential threats. The industry is being transformed. What is the future of the banking industry in 2021 and beyond?

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Blog Feature

Change Management

Do I Need Change Management?

Sometimes, change is natural. The caterpillar changing to a butterfly, the tadpole changing to a frog – these types of changes happen all the time in nature. Yet, change in business can feel anything but natural. And it’s not just at your place of business. According to McKinsey research, “nearly 70% of change programs fail to achieve their goals, largely due to employee resistance and lack of management support.” That’s a powerful stat. It tells us not only that most change projects fail; it even gives us insight into why. It’s the people side of change.

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Blog Feature

Change Management

Understanding the Types of Organizational Change

Change is hard, but not impossible. Understanding how change works, considering how people will react to change, and planning a thoughtful roll-out are all ways to ease the burden of change. It’s a practice called Change Management, and for organizational change, it can be your key to success. It’s also important to recognize that not every change situation can be managed in the same way. An important first step in enacting change is to understand which type of change your change management project falls under. In organizations, change can be grouped into two broad categories – transformational and transitional.

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Blog Feature

Change Management

Do I Need Change Management? Four Common Situations

How Do I Know I Need Change Management? The funny thing about Change Management is that it’s one of those things that you probably don’t know exists until you need it. Yes, I know that’s an odd thing to say, but hear me out on this. With change management, here’s a very common scenario leading to awareness.

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Blog Feature

Intelligent Information Management (IIM)

How to Manage Information - Growing Your Own Success

Here at AIIM, we believe that information is a business asset. Your information has the potential to help you digitally transform and understand, anticipate, and redefine experiences for your customers. But, information is a different type of asset. An asset like money is much more straight-forward because it’s easy to see its value and easy to understand. Your information is much different in that it needs attention in order to become an asset.

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Blog Feature

Email Management

Things You Can Do To Effectively Manage Your Emails

In times of social distancing and remote work, email has become one of the primary communication lines for businesses. In fact, the average American user receives around 126 emails on a normal day. However, with so much activity going on, it’s no secret that inboxes can become cluttered quite easily. If you want to be efficient when it comes to your incoming emails and replies, here are some things you can do:

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Blog Feature

Automation  |  Electronic Records Management (ERM)  |  Information Governance

Records Management Vs. Information Governance - It's AND not OR

When the dominant terminologies to describe a problem change, there is often a corresponding confusion in the roles that individuals play. In the broader content space, we experienced some of this disorientation as the core language used shifted from “ECM” to “Content Services,” and then with the incorporation of “Content Services” into the broader framework of “Intelligent Information Management.” This same terminology disorientation has been true in the governance arena as well, with varying uses and interpretations of “Records Management” and “Information Governance.” The confusion has left some organizations asking, “Do we need Records Managers, or do we need Information Governance professionals?”

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Blog Feature

AIIM on Air  |  Digital Transformation  |  Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

[Podcast] Exploring the New Norm of IIM in State and Local Government

More and more records managers in state and local government operations tell me that their job is changing. In addition to stacks and stacks of scanned files, and a confluence of different types of electronic files, the inclusion of audio and video records are becoming more and more common. Indeed, many managers now must capture, store, and manage things like audio from 911 dispatch, police camera footage, and other documentary evidence that fall outside the typical scope of “records.”

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Blog Feature

Privacy  |  eDiscovery

An Update on International and Cross-Border Discovery

There have been some interesting developments in the world of E-Discovery tied to many of the same privacy protection laws and regulations changing the game in records and information management. To get a better understanding of how these regulations are affecting cross-border Discovery, we connected with our friends at the Association of Certified E-Discovery Specialists (ACEDS). Please enjoy this guest post by Mike Quartararo, President of ACEDS. Parties in the US are allowed broad and liberal discovery of electronically stored information (ESI) relevant and proportional to the claims and defenses in a legal action. When a US-based litigant seeks ESI stored in other countries, however, it raises thorny legal and practical issues. ACEDS recently conducted a webinar on this topic entitled “Now What? Cross-Border and International Discovery Post-Schrems II” with Bryant Isbell from Baker & McKenzie and Eric Mandel from Driven.

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Blog Feature

Information Governance  |  Intelligent Information Management (IIM)

Positioning Rules as Solutions

As you already know, people are more likely to follow your rules after they buy in to the reasons behind them. But you can take it one step further, and provide your “rules” as solutions instead of orders. Amazon’s Kindle publishing team understands this concept well. I was preparing the Kindle edition of my recent book, following the production of the softcover edition. The printed book is in full color and uses a rich burgundy to highlight text. As you may know, some Kindle models are restricted to shades of grey and sepia. If a book is going to be compatible with as many devices as possible, it needs to specify an alternative color for highlighting on monochromatic devices. Kindle could have handled it badly. They could have shown me a policy that looked like the following:

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Blog Feature

AIIM on Air  |  Digital Transformation

[Podcast] Office Re-Entry in Times of COVID

In this episode of AIIM On Air, I speak with Sue Trombley, Managing Director of Thought Leadership for Iron Mountain. We discuss the biggest impacts on the workplace from Covid-19 and the challenges and opportunities of the new normal of business today.

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Blog Feature

Automation  |  Electronic Records Management (ERM)  |  Information Governance

Death of the Information Governance Salesman

Before we start, let’s take a minute to address the big elephant in the room. You’re probably thinking, “Where are you going with this sales angle, Sean? I work with records and information, and my job is all about managing, protecting, and storing it. I don’t sell a thing!” Well, what we’re going to cover today will show you that you ARE, in fact, in the business of selling when it comes to Information Governance – it’s just a slightly different model than we’re all used to. In this selling model, we’re not exchanging goods and services for money; we’re exchanging ideas for acceptance.

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Blog Feature

AIIM on Air  |  Machine Learning

[Podcast] Are You Data Rich, or Data Poor?

In this episode of AIIM On Air I am joined by Greg Council, VP Marketing and Product Management at Parascript. Greg is a member of the AIIM leadership council and an expert in digital transformation using tools like advanced data extraction, taxonomy, and search.

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Blog Feature

Automation  |  Electronic Records Management (ERM)  |  Information Governance

'Records Management,' 'Information Governance,' and Why Words Matter

Words are important. Beyond that, the words you choose can mean the difference between someone understanding what you’re saying and someone giving you that glazed expression with one eyebrow lifted saying, “Huh?” It’s just as important to think of WHO you are communicating to, as it is to think of WHAT you’re trying to say. Allow me to share a quick example to illustrate my point. One of my favorite hobbies is fly fishing. To me, there’s nothing like being out in the middle of nowhere, wading into the middle of a crystal clear river, and trying to fool some trout.

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Blog Feature

Automation  |  Information Governance

3 Simple Reasons Why Information Governance NEEDS Automation

Digitally Transforming IS the Future Most organizations and departments have a mandate to continuously improve operations. A conventional change agenda involves better tools and technology, better behaviors, and better processes, all focused on generating better efficiencies and improved productivity - a transition called Digital Transformation.

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Blog Feature

AIIM on Air

[Podcast] Think Beyond the Bucket

Organizations today have an overwhelming amount of data to manage. AIIM members tell us that they expect the amount of information coming into their organizations to grow by as much as 4.5 times in the next coming months...and this will include everything from scanned images, to audio and video files, and everything in-between. At times it may seem like managing these overflowing buckets is a losing proposition. But my guest in this week’s episode of AIIM On Air suggests that we “think beyond the bucket” when it comes to information management success.

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Blog Feature

Artificial Intelligence (AI)  |  Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

Why Should You Care About Bots?

Growing up, my parents taught me that there are some questions that aren’t appropriate to ask. Generally, it’s safe to avoid asking people their age, their salary, their weight, their politics, etc. Some questions can make the people being asked feel uncomfortable and so should be avoided.

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Blog Feature

AIIM on Air  |  Electronic Records Management (ERM)  |  Sharepoint and Office 365

[Podcast] Managing Modern Records, Managing Modern Teams

This week brings another great episode of AIIM On Air, where we continue to explore the challenges, opportunities, and technologies that are driving digital transformation today.

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Blog Feature

AIIM on Air  |  Cloud

[Podcast] Achieving Cloud Content Harmony – Access with Control

Cloud Content Management has the power to change the game for businesses of all sizes and types. This powerful technology and its massively scalable storage and operational power can crunch large sets of data, use analytics to understand it, and provide the security needed to lock it all down.

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Blog Feature

Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

How to Tackle the Information Management Challenges of Legacy Applications

Many organizations feel forced to keep legacy applications alive to retain access to historical data – either for customer service, operational requirements, or compliance. However, keeping these old systems running can use up resources that would be better deployed driving digital transformation. And relying on legacy technology creates business risk because these older systems are much harder to fix when things go wrong and more vulnerable to security threats.

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Blog Feature

AIIM on Air  |  Intelligent Information Management (IIM)

[Podcast] Opportunities in Intelligent Information Management

There’s no doubt that the world has changed as a result of the pandemic. In our personal lives, we’ve made the necessary changes to our daily routines, added a mask to our list of things to remember when we leave the house along with our cell phones, wallet, and keys, and moved many of our social gatherings online.

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Blog Feature

Business Process Management (BPM)  |  Process Automation

Business Processes and Change - Reasons, Drivers, and Considerations

Times change. And that's one of the biggest reasons there's now a resurgence in business process management. Globally, firms are reaching a point where they don't feel they can eke out any more efficiencies from their current processes. At the same time, they understand that new entrants are coming into the marketplace with dramatically different business models. In the insurance industry, for example, companies such as Progressive have developed an online Internet service that has had an obvious impact on older insurance companies and their business model. Examples like that exist throughout this industry, and just about every industry throughout the world. New competitors come online and throw a "spanner in the works" to existing business models. Times change, and organizations have to change with them.

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Blog Feature

AIIM on Air  |  Intelligent Information Management (IIM)

[Podcast] Titans of Technology Innovation

All around us, technology is changing everything. Many can remember having to go to their local video store to rent a movie. Now, with the click of a button from the comfort of your own living room, you can access an endless amount of streaming movies. Even the simpler things in life, like flipping on a light switch, are being replaced by technology. You no longer have to lift a finger to turn on the lamp; technology can help you illuminate the room just by saying, “Alexa, turn on the lights.”

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Blog Feature

Change Management

How to Talk Technology When You’re Not Technical

Some people are hyper-technical, and they can be intimidating if you don’t feel technically minded. It can feel like you’re not even speaking the same language as they seem to bury you in TLAs and FLAs (Three-Letter Acronyms and Four-Letter Acronyms). Information professionals can communicate with their technical colleagues – even when they’re not that technical.

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Blog Feature

Change Management

Change in the Middle of a COVID-19 Crisis

You still must get things done. The organization needs to make changes to adapt to a more turbulent world. However, how do you accomplish change when the organization’s change capacity is used coping with COVID-19? Learn why change management skills are more critical now than ever.

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Blog Feature

Change Management  |  Information Governance

The Governance Gauntlet

You’ve been told that your information management project needs governance. Maybe you’ve even formed a governance committee. However, what is governance, anyway? If you’ve been in organizations for a while, you’re likely indoctrinated into the theory of control; however, that’s not what governance is about. Still, you must have governance, or you’ll end up with chaos. How do you tame the mythical siren of governance to guide your users to safety and your organization to value?

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Blog Feature

AIIM on Air  |  Intelligent Information Management (IIM)  |  Oil and Gas

[Podcast] IIM Challenges and Opportunities in the Energy Industry

The energy industry plays a crucial role in all our lives. Without it, we wouldn't be able to keep the lights on...or the wifi, or the computers...and so on, but what is it that powers this critical industry?

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Blog Feature

Content Migration

Common Problems with Content Migrations

The international standard on records management, ISO 15489 defines migration as the: "Act of moving records from one system to another, while maintaining the records' authenticity, integrity, reliability, and usability." But, migration is much broader than just records. Essentially, any time a legacy system is decommissioned, it should be reviewed to determine: What information is stored there? Does this information still need to be actively accessible?

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Blog Feature

Automation  |  Human Resources

The Pros and Cons of Automating Human Resources

In their efforts to streamline key business processes, industry leaders have looked to artificial intelligence (AI) and automation. Automation has forced multiple industries to rethink how they work and function ⁠— and human resources is one field where automation proves its worth. However, automation is not a be-all end-all solution to HR woes. While it fills in the gaps where humans fail to deliver, automation has its disadvantages, too. That said, here are some pros and cons of automating HR processes.

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Blog Feature

Change Management

5 Steps to Stimulating Stakeholders

Your project's approved and funded, but it feels stuck. You want to get things done, and so does everyone else – at least that's what they say. But somehow things aren't right, and your project is quickly coming off the rails. Here are five things you can do to stimulate your stakeholders and get things back on track.

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Blog Feature

Change Management

Can You Add Teasers to Add Attention?

Think back to middle school English classes. You were taught that your titles should summarize your main points. People should be able to get the gist of what you’re talking about by just reading the title. The problem is that what you learned in English class is wrong. You don’t want your executives or stakeholders believing they know what you’re going to say without reading what you’ve said, do you?

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Blog Feature

Change Management

How to Get Executive Buy-In for Your Information Management Project

We’ve all been there. We know that our information management technology is getting old, and it needs to be replaced. We can’t integrate to the newest artificial intelligence tools that could help improve the completeness and accuracy of the metadata, nor can we feel confident that we are managing records appropriately, and don’t even get me started on search. Despite these problems that we’re critically aware of, we sometimes find it difficult to get executive buy-in for the projects that are so desperately needed.

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Blog Feature

AIIM on Air  |  Information Governance

[Podcast] The Impact of a Pandemic on Information Governance

When I think back to this time last year, I’m shocked by just how different things are since the start of COVID-19. Businesses have gone through major shifts in record time - projects like moving to a remote office environment that often takes months to complete were carried out in just a few days or weeks.

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Blog Feature

Capture and Imaging

How to Identify Your Points of Information Capture

Have you noticed how information just keeps popping up all over your business? It’s enough to make you feel like this trying to keep up with it all. You solve one issue, only for another to just pop up: via GIPHY Information has to enter the process from somewhere. And knowing where it comes from can make a difference by allowing you to make certain assumptions about that information: its format, its quality, its state of approval, and so on.

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Blog Feature

Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

The State of Content Management in 2020 [Expert Tips & Research]

Few announcements in information management have been bigger than Gartner’s article heard round the world that announced the death of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) as we knew it. Michael Woodbridge’s quote gets straight to the point here: “ECM is now dead (kaput, finite, an ex-market name), at least in how Gartner defines the market. It’s been replaced by the term content services, a strategic concept that covers three aspects, namely content services Applications, Platforms and Components.” Since this article was published in 2017, the Information Management industry exploded with new questions, like, Is ECM really dead? What’s this content services thing? It turns out, the story is just a little more complicated than one technology being replaced by another.

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Blog Feature

Content Services  |  Enterprise Content Management (ECM)  |  Intelligent Information Management (IIM)

ECM vs. Content Services vs. Intelligent Information Management

In recent years, nothing has sparked more controversy in the information management industry than the 2017 Gartner post officially retiring the term “Enterprise Content Management (ECM)” in favor of a new term, content services. Here at AIIM, we’ve been providing independent research, educational training, and certification for over 70 years. For a good majority of that time, the focus has been on ECM and the practices associated with ECM to capture, store, manage, and preserve information. Heck, we even standardized the term Enterprise Content Management way back in the early 2000s, so in a lot of ways, AIIM is uniquely positioned to help clarify some of the confusion that may still remain.

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Blog Feature

AIIM on Air  |  Accounting and Finance  |  Paperless Office

[Podcast] Transforming How Mortgage Insurance Applications Are Processed

There may be no other industry that could benefit more from automation than the mortgage banking industry. This industry is full of time-consuming, error-prone, and paper and labor-intensive processes, all perfectly-suited for automation. And with huge volumes of loans being generated each year (nearly 5 million new consumer mortgages alone), it may soon become impossible to move forward without the use of automation.

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Blog Feature

Intelligent Information Management (IIM)

PDF vs. TIFF vs. JPEG vs. PNG vs. MS Office - Which File Format for My Business Application?

There are literally thousands of file formats available – which can lead to lots of confusion when trying to select the best file format for your business applications. Different file formats work better to meet certain business requirements, and selecting the wrong format can cause issues for organizations, their customers, their legal team, etc.

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Blog Feature

AIIM Community

Is AIIM+ Membership Worth It? Pros and Cons

Even though I’ve been an AIIM staff for more than 9 years, I continue to pay for my AIIM+ membership out of my own pocket. So it’s pretty obvious that I see the value of AIIM+, but you’re here to figure out if it’s worth it for YOU. My goal with this article is to give you a transparent look at both the pros and cons of an AIIM+ membership.

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Blog Feature

AIIM on Air  |  Information Security

[Podcast] Tips for Staying Cyber-Safe While Working from Home

Remote working comes with a number of benefits both for the employee and the employer. Employees enjoy a better work-life balance, the comfort of their home office, and can avoid the stress of a commute. Businesses can save money, improve employee retention, and more. But, new challenges also arise with the recent boom in remote working, including cybersecurity threats like ransomware, data hacking, viruses, and more. At the office, typically somebody else takes care of the cybersecurity measures. But, when employees are working remotely on their home wifi systems, it's a bit of a different story. On this episode of the AIIM on Air Podcast, we take a look at what you can do to keep your systems safe and your company and private information protected.

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Blog Feature

Information Governance  |  Intelligent Information Management (IIM)

Intelligent Information Management (IIM) Policies and the Law - Part 3

In this series, we've been exploring the intersection of IIM policy and the law in order to help IIM practitioners and legal specialists work together more effectively by gaining a better understanding of the relationship between the two. So far, we've covered: Part 1 - IIM Policies and The Principle of Hearsay Part 2 - IIM Policies and "Ordinary Course of Business" Now, let's compare IIM policies to contracts.

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Blog Feature

Information Governance  |  Intelligent Information Management (IIM)

Intelligent Information Management (IIM) Policies and the Law - Part 2

In this series, we've been exploring the intersection of IIM policy and the law. The idea here is to help IIM practitioners and legal specialists work together more effectively by gaining a better understanding of the relationship between the two. In my first post, where we explored the principle of hearsay, we left off asking about the relationship between IIM policies and the "ordinary course of business." So, let's take a look.

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Blog Feature

Automation  |  Information Governance

Information Governance Pressure Points – 3 Common Areas of Failure

Back in the day, when work was centralized in locations and on devices “within” the enterprise, it was reasonable to assume that control could most effectively be maintained by managing security at the firewall. Information security was largely a function of “keeping the bad guys out.”

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Blog Feature

Information Governance  |  Intelligent Information Management (IIM)

Intelligent Information Management (IIM) Policies and the Law - Part 1

Every so often, IIM practitioners and lawyers cross paths. One such intersection is around policy writing. As practitioners modify and improve their IIM policies, it's important to keep in mind how those policies specifically relate to the law. Understanding that relationship better will help IIM and legal specialists work together more effectively.

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Blog Feature

Automation

Why Workplace Automation is for Everyone

Workplace automation is starting to become the norm for modern corporations. With automation enabling massive improvements in talent acquisition, employee recruitment, and customer service, it's no surprise that more and more enterprises are jumping on the automation bandwagon. Let's take a deeper look into how workplace automation leads to increased efficiency and profitability.

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Blog Feature

AIIM on Air  |  Electronic Records Management (ERM)

[Podcast] What's it like to be a University Records Officer?

We're packing in the fun with this month's podcast episode by exploring 3 important intelligent information management topics. First, we ask - What’s it like to be a Records Officer at a major college or university? To find out, we talked to Samara Carter, Records Officer at George Mason University who joins us for another AIIM Member Spotlight interview. She stops by the show to share what it’s like to work in records at George Mason, the biggest information challenges she’s working on right now, and her thoughts on being an AIIM member.

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Blog Feature

Blockchain  |  Data Management

The Applications of Blockchain in Data Management

Blockchain is one of the most important new technologies that has impacted the business world in the last decade. Along with cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), and robotic process automation (RPA), blockchain is transforming business operations and challenging traditional methods the world over. For those who are considering adoption for one of its many applications, blockchain can hold great promise.

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Blog Feature

Automation  |  Process Automation

Is It Time for Intelligent Automation? 5 Questions to Ask

As Information Professionals, we’re facing a perfect storm of sorts - as information chaos continues to grow, so does the value of this information. Information is now cascading down on every organization in unprecedented volumes and forms, challenging traditional and manual concepts of records management and information stewardship.

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Blog Feature

AIIM Community

The Best Memberships for Information Professionals

“It’s 2020,” you might be thinking, “Who needs associations?” Associations and professional memberships can often be thought of as a relic of the past or a resume builder, but not as a valuable personal development tool. For an introvert, I’m a pretty social, member-y kinda guy. I’ve been a paid professional member of both AIIM and ARMA for nearly 20 years. I’ve held memberships in lots of other different groups and associations over the years. And I’ve even been a member of the United States Marine Corps Drill Instructor Association since 1993.

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AIIM on Air  |  Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

[Podcast] Tips and Advice for Legacy Replacement

We're now operating twenty years into a new millennium. But despite the futuristic potential, many organizations continue to operate with systems and software that are a decade or more behind the times. Organizations that continue to operate in the past will be challenged to keep pace today – and in the future.

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Digital Transformation

Scaling Your Business for Digital Transformation - 6 Important Factors

Each year brings a rapid increase in technological advancements that can benefit both your personal and professional life. Constant tech advancements can make it feel hard to keep up with competing businesses if your company isn't adapting fast enough. In this day and age, digital transformations are integral for a growing business's future, as technology changes the advancements and operations of every company. In fact, 40% of all business technology spending will go towards these changes, and, as of 2018, advanced analytics was the greatest form of digital investment, and there were plans to increase similar solution investments by 75% over the course of the next several months.

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Information Governance  |  Intelligent Information Management (IIM)

Expect Few People to Read Your IIM Policy

Too often, I hear IIM professionals complain about this issue. "People aren't reading our IIM policy," they say. "I wish our organization forced everybody to read the policy. That way they would know what the IIM requirements are." My response is always the same: Given the choice, 99% of the people in your organization will never read your IIM policy. Get used to it. That is not going to change. It's not a bad thing.

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Capture and Imaging  |  Paperless Office

The Hidden Benefits of the Digital Mailroom

The concept of a digital mailroom has been around a while. The idea is pretty simple - all incoming mail is scanned on entry and delivered electronically to the appropriate department or process. In reality, only mail with business value is likely to be processed. This will predominantly be documents with a structure such as forms, orders, invoices, delivery dockets, and vouchers.

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Digital Transformation

5 Pillars of a Successful Digital Transformation

The large-scale and lasting impacts of a digital transformation will influence your company for decades to come. Going digital is not merely about adopting present practices - it is a step into the future, aligning your business model and company's methods with the format that is solidifying itself as the new standard.

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Cloud

Cloud Computing - Benefits, Approaches, and Considerations

Cloud computing is an expanding technology that is leading the digital transformation of businesses in various sectors. The strategies that organizations take in their cloud journey can give them a competitive advantage and lead to rapid growth. But this may not only mean a simple deployment of technology that the company must adapt to, a new cloud approach could be truly transformative.

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Information Governance  |  Intelligent Information Management (IIM)

How to Apply Lean Principles to Policy Writing

As important as Intelligent Information Management (IIM) policy writing is, it's probably not the only dish you have cooking on the stove. It's important, therefore, not to let that process commandeer more time from your day than it has to. The best way to do that is to keep your IIM policies lean.

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Business Process Management (BPM)

How to Bring Business Process Management to Your Business

Businesses looking for ongoing growth and scalability try to achieve these goals through different approaches that can provide “that extra advantage.” One such approach is business process management, which aims to find and make ongoing improvements in the operations of a business. This is currently a popular tactic in the business world, featuring various applications, techniques, and tools which make it a complex field of business development.

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Digital Transformation  |  Intelligent Information Management (IIM)

Information Management Business Issues Hit Distance Learning

Like many other areas around the country and around the world, my daughter's school has joined the "learn from home" movement. I've been a teleworker for nearly 16 years, so we already have the technology infrastructure required, including an older but still useful laptop and fairly robust Wi-Fi. But it's come with more than a few challenges, some of which are the same types of information management challenges we all struggle with at times in the world of business. The back story: On March 16th, my daughter's school made the decision to have all the kids work from home for at least the next two weeks. At least one parent for each family had to go into the school that day to get set up on Google Classroom, have expectations set about attendance and performance, clean out lockers so they could be deep-cleaned, and pick up homework.

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AIIM on Air  |  Information Governance

[Podcast] Strategic Considerations for Information Governance Audits

There are a few different scenarios for auditing your data. Audits can be performed to assess data quality, identify data liabilities, ensure data privacy, uncover data leaks, and so on. Information governance audits, in particular, are used to ensure compliance with relevant information governance policies and procedures.

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Information Security

Work from Home: 7 Best Security Practices for Remote Teams

Thanks to the internet and the connected world we live in, working remotely is increasing in popularity for a good reason! The benefits of working from home have been good for both organization and their employees. On the one hand, organizations can hire talent despite the geographical issue and provide a flexible work schedule, minimized exposure to germs, and so on! On the other hand! For employees, working from home will reduce the commuting time, empower workers in their own environments, and provide the convenience of things like virtual meetings. 40% of people say that the top benefit of working remotely is the flexible schedule. But, as people say, with great benefits, come great risks!

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Artificial Intelligence (AI)  |  Privacy

Could a Mobile App Help Contain COVID-19? Balancing Privacy Rights & Public Interest

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to accelerate, there are some innovative efforts to minimize its impact. In one such approach, a multidisciplinary group of computer scientists, mathematicians, and epidemiologists at the Big Data Institute at Oxford University have developed a mathematical model instantiated in a mobile application that traces contact. Those involved in the project believe it's "..possible to stop the epidemic…if contact tracing is sufficiently fast, sufficiently efficient, and happens at scale." Typically, contact tracing is the most effective way to contain an outbreak. However, with a virus like COVID-19, that's preponderantly transmitted by asymptomatic patients, "classical contact tracing will not be enough to achieve the speed and efficiency needed, but it could be achieved by a contact tracing mobile app if used by a sufficiently large proportion of the population."

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Capture and Imaging  |  Digital Transformation

How Do I Tame My Information Chaos? 3 Ways to Address it Head-On

Before we get into how to tame your Information Chaos, let’s take a step back and look at WHY so many of us are experiencing it. These days, business information can come from anywhere, anytime, and in any form. Match this up with a growing volume and variety of the information we’re creating, and you can see how it can quickly get out of hand and become unmanageable without some strategies in place.

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AIIM Community

AIIM vs. ARMA: An Honest Comparison of Membership

I regularly get asked questions about AIIM and ARMA – which one’s “better,” which one’s the right one, what’s the difference, etc. I've been a dues paying member of both since 2001 – August 2001 for AIIM, September 2001 for ARMA. I've also served on both organizations’ Board of Directors (2004-2005 for AIIM, 2007-2010 for ARMA). I have thoughts on both and will compare them in several key areas, including: Focus Types of Membership Cost of Membership Benefits Chapters and Local Events Number of Members Before we get started, in the interest of total transparency, I serve as AIIM's VP of Training and Certification. With that in mind, our goal with this article is to be unbiased and provide those considering membership with the facts needed to make a decision.

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AIIM on Air  |  Intelligent Information Management (IIM)

[Podcast] The Universal Translator – Not Just for Star Trek Anymore

The show Star Trek always had the coolest futuristic technology. For example, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wished I could tell Scotty to “Beam me up!” and be teleported back home. Another thing that really caught my eye on that show was their “universal translator.” It was basically this handheld device that allowed you to easily communicate across any language – be it human or alien!

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Digital Transformation  |  Paperless Office

The First Step to Effective Working from Home: Digitize your Paper Documents

Many of us find ourselves working from home – often rather suddenly and unexpectedly. Organizations of all sizes and in all industries are now in the position of figuring out how to ensure that the business of the business continues while staff stay home and practice effective social distancing. The good news is that the technology needed for effective working from home exists and is generally mature – though some providers have found that the sudden surge in volume can cause issues with particular solutions or capabilities.

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Digital Transformation  |  Paperless Office

New to Remote Working? Tapping Into 6+ Years of Tips for Working from Home

For many across the globe, limiting their human contact, the home has become…well, home base for just about everything. Folks are taking advantage of virtual meeting software like GoToMeeting and Zoom to video chat with friends, host virtual dinner parties, and even play board games! And that’s just in our personal lives. In our work lives, companies are piecing together Digital Workplace strategies to allow their employees to work from home. Today, workers everywhere are booting up their laptops at kitchen tables and temporary home offices – many for the very first time. And with this change comes some new challenges like – deciding where in your home you should work from, how to deal with the new distractions, and more. Here at AIIM, remote working has been a priority of ours for many years now, and our staff has experienced it all when it comes to working from home. So, we thought we’d gather our best WFH tips for those newly remote workers.

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Certified Information Professional (CIP)

Finding Positive Opportunity in Social Distancing

It's no secret that I'm passionate about training and information management. I delivered the first AIIM public training course in the U.S. in January 2006. Since then, I've delivered more than 400 workshops, seminars, breakout sessions, and training courses relating to information management – almost all in person.

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