Organizations Ramp-up Records Management Technology Adoption Plans

Posted by Mark Brousseau

Enterprises plan to accelerate records management adoption in 2011, Brian W. Hill, senior analyst, Forrester Research, said today during a presentation at the ARMA Annual Conference in San Francisco.

Sixty-three percent of records management stakeholders plan to expand or roll-out new records management products in 2011, Hill said, citing the results of a study conducted by Forrester Research and ARMA. The key drivers of this growth include the need for organizations to manage a broader array of electronic content, support regulatory requirements, and ease eDiscovery pain.

Hill said records management software spending next year will top $250,000 for 17 percent of respondents to the study by Forrester Research and ARMA. “If you factor in some of the other costs associated with records management – such as change management – the figure is actually quite a bit higher,” Hill added.

While spending on records management solutions is on the upswing, satisfaction rates are declining. Fifteen percent of respondents to the study by Forrester Research and ARMA indicated that they are “very satisfied” with their records management solution – down from 23 percent the year before. “Given the maturity of records management, this is cause for concern,” Hill said, adding that there are a lot of reasons for low satisfaction. “Some of them have to do with technology, but others have to deal with people and processes, such as complex and lengthy deployments and the high costs of software and services,” Hill explained.

Synchronizing eDiscovery, records management and archiving efforts was identified as a challenge by about half of the organizations surveyed. “These handoffs are a big headache for organizations,” Hill noted.

And the problem could get worse. “Records management professionals must recognize that expected storage volumes for records systems are significant and growing fast,” Hill said. “Records management stakeholders expecting more than 50 percent storage growth may need to reset their expectations with those of IT storage stakeholders to ensure that capacity plans are appropriately aligned.”

To improve the likelihood of success for your eDiscovery program, Hill suggested the following seven habits:

Effective habit No. 1: Get executive support and build the right team.
Effective habit No. 2: Stop saving everything.
Effective habit No. 3: Streamline legal hold and look to leverage ‘early case assessment’ applications.
Effective habit No. 4: Focus on a broad array of ESI as part of your legal risk mitigation efforts.
Effective habit No. 5: Seek to rationalize systems and processes that support eDiscovery.
Effective habit No. 6: Strategically plan for global eDiscovery implications.
Effective habit No. 7: Accelerate eDiscovery program formalization.

What do you think?