Understanding and Overcoming SharePoint 2013 Records Management Challenges

EPC Group will share several new blog posts this week on SharePoint 2013, Office 365, and Records \ Enterprise Content Management (RM\ECM) strategies. So many organizations throughout the globe have not implemented successful records management initiatives because of the inherit difficulty applying retention policies to content. Another main issue IT has faced is the difficulty in providing a balanced centralized platform that is easy for users to adopt that will store both official records as well as standard documents and other content.

Other major issues have been the overall poor user adoption of records management solutions due to the lack of training and transparency to users regarding the importance of compliance as well as the high costs of complying with new laws and regulations and the ability to ensure the system can adopt to updated requirements.

It is key to ensure you are aligning the organization’s existing Active Directory (AD) and security architecture to provide proper and governed access to controlled records to key identified individuals while staying vigilant and you put in place controls for auditing and other possible eDiscovery related custom integration requirements.

There are risks and other possible issues your organization may face by not having a records management and\or enterprise content management strategy in place such as encoring added audit or related court fines or higher out-of-court settlements.

It is key for the entire project team to understand Microsoft SharePoint’s permissions and how they are applied to ensure you understand the granular aspects of the underlying platform,

Determine Your Organization’s File Plan

Many organizations differ on terminology around records management strategies or what the overall file plan will look like once deployed. A SharePoint file plan consists of information such as:

• Analyze Record Types
• Designate Record Owners
• Determine the organization’s Record Coding Schema
• Review possible events that can occur for the record
• Formulate the Retention Period
• Decide on the Archival or Disposition
• Determine Version Management Policy

It is key to continue to balance your business and functional requirements with the continued planning of the underlying infrastructure requirements of SharePoint during your records management or enterprise content management initiative.

EPC Group will continue to share additional posts throughout the week on SharePoint 2013 and Records \ Content Management Strategies (RM\ECM) “from the consulting trenches.”