2015 Information Governance Trends

As digital information grows, so do the challenges and burden with managing this mountain of data. Records management is no longer the sufficient solution. However, its natural evolution to encompass a wide array of features and capabilities, resulting in Information Governance, will continue to change the way that companies maintain their documents and ensure compliance across the organization and within industries. The following are the top trends that we see making a major impact in 2015:

Governance as a Service

Cloud computing, while not a new trend, will continue to drastically reduce IT costs for companies as maintenance is effectively outsourced to the provider and the applications can be accessed quickly. Cloud will continue to play a major role in mobility, regardless of the location or device. As the disparate workforce continues to spread, so will the rapid adoption of cloud use. In fact, one of the biggest drivers are file sync and share-based repositories (Google Drive, Dropbox, Microsoft One Drive, etc.).

While complications do exist with cloud deployments (such as companies that have regulation challenges operating within multiple jurisdictions or solutions that do not offer lifecycle management and governance capabilities), companies will have no choice but to look to deploy governance in the cloud on content that resides in uncontrolled environments. Executives will need to bring these systems under the corporate governance umbrella while ensuring employees are leveraging the capabilities of these systems. Simultaneously, Information Governance steering committees will look for easily available tools to begin rolling out the overall program.

Social Media Governance

Companies will need to digitize their businesses to remain competitive in today’s market. However, many are lacking the ability and resources to begin and do not have the means to do so in accordance with regulations and governance. This is increasingly crucial as employees, partners and customers communication through new platforms, including social media. As a result, some interactions may represent corporate records.

In 2015, more organizations will look to incorporate social media content in their policy definition and explore methods on enforcing the policy across the various systems.

Valuation of Information Assets

The speed at which information is created is astounding. Companies are unable to analyze this information as quickly as it’s created, and extracting value at a quick pace can be almost impossible. That means the potential value of the information is in many ways greater than the current actual value.

Information is one of their company’s greatest assets but executives do not truly understand, measure or leverage the total value of that information. In fact, they typically do not establish value for information assets the way they do for others assets within the company.

2015 will be the year of value. Companies will keep an internal balance sheet for the valuation of corporation information assets. Otherwise, they will maintain the idea that customer information is only valuable once it’s used and that idle data is valueless. Infonomics, coined by Doug Laney of Gartner Group as the theory and practice that information is an actual asset with both potential and realized value that can be quantified, maximized, and managed as an asset, will become more viable as it begins to be adopted more quickly.

Extracting Value According to Policy

As companies extract information from big data, it’s important that they are being transparent on how they use the information. With the Internet of Things, location services on mobile devices, website tracking initiatives and other intelligent tools, companies are collecting massive information on their customers. The question on the table is how are companies efficiently extracting value from this information (scattered across systems and across formats) and, more importantly, protecting the privacy of the customer?