The association for enterprise content management (AIIM) has produced a white paper on the 10 excuses given by managers for not introducing document management.  Basically it says that managers need to be convinced to do document management because they:

1.       Aren’t concerned about how long staff are spending looking for information.

2.       Aren’t worried about being sued and having to produce critical records.

3.       Aren’t concerned about how much it’s costing staff to create, file, search for and reproduce lost documents.

4.       Aren’t concerned about the cost or environmental impact of photocopying documents (the average for a document is 19 times).

5.       Aren’t concerned that staff are spending 1½ hours per day on average managing email.

6.       Are happy to fly everyone in for meetings at which everyone has a different draft of the document being discussed.

7.       Don’t worry about losing information in a disaster.

8.       Aren’t that concerned about information security.

9.       Don’t think process automation is cost effective.

10.   Don’t think that managing documents is as important as managing financial information and HR systems.

After reading the paper, I felt more than a little insulted on behalf of managers everywhere. 

I’ve been working in the IM field for a long time and have talked to many managers about their corporate information.  The managers I talk to are more likely to be lying awake at night worrying about these very things. 

The most common concerns that I hear from managers are:

1.       I know we have problems and I don’t know how to fix them.

2.       We’ve tried different systems and people don’t use them.

3.       Everyone’s too busy right now to take this on.

My responses to these concerns are:

1.       Many organizations are facing the same problems, and they can be fixed. There are best practices out there and there are professionals who know what to do.

2.       You need a good system that is integrated with the tools people use every day, that isn’t overly complex, and is introduced in phases. 100% adoption has to be the goal from day 1. You need to involve users in defining the solution. They need a sense of ownership over the solution that is introduced.

3.       Treat it as a project, and find the best time to do it. Management has to make it a priority. The project doesn’t have to over-tax your people, but they know the business and have to be involved in defining a solution that will work for them. You can bring in the experience you need to put fresh eyes on the problems and help select and implement the best solution.

When it comes to managing information, often small changes can have a big impact.  Bite off manageable pieces to tackle, and tackle the high impact ones first. The rest will follow.