AIIM Research Shows Risk And Compliance Now The Largest Driver For Information Management

Yet only 18 percent of organizations align their IM/ECM system strategies with agreed Information Governance policies

The number of large organizations citing risk and compliance as the largest driver for Information Management (IM) has risen hugely in the past year, from 38 percent to 59 percent, according to new AIIM research launched recently.

Nearly half (44 percent ) of mid-sized organizations also cite this as the biggest driver, although smaller organizations say cost savings and productivity improvements are more significant drivers for IM.

The new report, Information Management: State of the Industry 2016, revealed a lack of alignment between IM / Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems and Information Governance. Fewer than one in five organizations align their IM/ECM system strategies with agreed IG policies, while 15 percent have IG policies but they do not drive decisions. Twenty-nine percent have no IG policies whatsoever.   

“Organizations are rightly concerned about corporate risk but are not aligning their systems so that they can comply,” said Bob Larrivee, chief analyst, AIIM. “Many existing systems are not fit for purpose in the social, mobile and cloud age, but before embarking on upgrades and replacements, organizations need to address the lack of information governance policy as a priority – this has to be the first step in minimizing risk.”

Despite the growing worry over risk, half of the organizations surveyed by AIIM admitted they would struggle to defend deletions in court, particularly with cloud file-shares and business social, but also SharePoint and email too. Even where organizations have IG policies, half are not auditing compliance and 15 percent admit they are mostly ignored.

Content overload threatens around one-quarter (24 percent) of respondents who have no mechanism to limit stored content volumes, and while 47 percent have an IG policy that defines retention periods, more than half (51 percent) rely on manual deletion versus 25 percent  who have automated deletion. Seven percent are using analytics tools for data clean up.

“The findings reveal that the Information Management industry is in a state of flux and many organizations are adapting a ‘bury your head in the sand’ strategy,” continued Larrivee. “Organizations know that they need to manage their content and information much better than they are, and are also aware of their shortcomings should they ever be required to go to court. Yet they are still not doing enough to address this, and one feels that it may take one huge compliance case to shake organizations into action.”

Other key findings in the AIIM report include:

• Eighty-seven percent are concerned about cloud chaos and 75 percent agree that email management is still the ‘elephant in the room’ with Information Management.
• Sixty-three percent of organizations use SharePoint as a main, secondary or legacy ECM/DM/RM system, including 27 percent using the online version.
• Only 22 percent have mobile access to ECM/RM content. Twenty-one percent have mobile capture and 20 percent  mobile content creation and commenting.
• Seventy-nine percent feel that they still have plenty of scope for extending and enhancing their ECM/BPM/RM systems.

The research for Information Management: State of the Industry 2016 was underwritten in part by Iron Mountain, Kofax, Nitro, OpenText, Onbase, Precision Content and Systemware. The full report can be downloaded here.

The survey was taken using a web-based tool by 266 individual members of the AIIM community between January 28, 2016, and February 21, 2016. Invitations to take the survey were sent via e-mail to a selection of the 180,000 AIIM community members.

About AIIM
AIIM has been an advocate and supporter of information professionals for 70 years. The association’s mission is to ensure that information professionals understand the current and future challenges of managing information assets in an era of social, mobile, cloud and big data. Founded in 1943, AIIM builds on a strong heritage of research and member service. Today, AIIM is a global, non-profit organization that provides independent research, education and certification programs to information professionals. AIIM represents the entire information management community, with programs and content for practitioners, technology suppliers, integrators and consultants.