How to become sensitive to records and information management problems

Start asking questions about rate.

Rate problems are the kinds of problems organisations have when they've already got a process that's working.

It works.

It could go faster.

It could have a lower error rate.

Social networking and internet search solve rate problems.

They haven't allowed us to do anything that we couldn't do before, they've just increased the rate that we can do it at.

Prior to social networking, if we wanted to know what 50 of our friends had been doing lately, we had to call them all.

Now we just scroll our facebook feed.

Prior to google, if you wanted an answer to a question, you went to a library or asked people until you found someone who knew the answer.

Now we just "google it."

Electronic record search is the same.

Prior to its existence, we would consult an index for the title we were looking for.

Now we just type in what we want, and go to it.

The point is that these technologies have transformed our lives.

But they didn't change the outcomes we can achieve.

They just gave us ways to do them faster - so now we do them more.

They solved a set of rate problems.

Every organisation is trying to solve rate problems.

If customer service can increase the rate they serve customers by 10%, they can serve 10% more with the same resources or improve the service by 10%.

If the records team can improve their processing rate by 25% it means that the vacant position that they haven't been allowed to fill probably won't hurt so much.

Once you can start to see rate problems, the trick is to understand where organising information differently can make the rate increase.

As long as the organisation has the right expertise in place, most problems boil down to making work form a queue, and presenting information to people so that they don't have to look for it.

Basically this means use workflow and forms.

These are amazing opportunitities for records and information management to become the productivity engine of the organisations it serves.

All you have to do is become sensitive to rate problems.