I was recently reading a blog posting from Chuck Hollis, VP Global Marketing for EMC Corporation.  His blog post was titled, "Does Your Organization Invest in IT?"

He stated that it is obvious that every organization spends money on IT.  He asked the question does your organization invest in IT in the same manner as an investor would in a company.  What does the answer to this question bring to the organization?  Mr. Hollis says 

"Because I believe that the answer ... will tell me much about what kind of IT organization you are … and -- ultimately -- what kind of IT organization you'll eventually be."

I believe that answering this same question in terms of Information Management also tells me a lot about what kind of organization you are and what kind you'll eventually be.  Are you spending money on Enterprise Content and Records Management (ECRM) or are you investing in it?

Mr. Hollis said that "Spending is generally about stuff I want now."  I think in terms of ECRM, spending money is usually more of a short-term project.  It is usually brought on by an event that causes an organization to have to do something now.  It may be brought on by a negative audit report.  It could be that the organization needs office space currently housing paper records for the new employees from a recent acquisition.  It could be because the Board of Directors wants to make sure the organization doesn't want the additional risk from having information that it could have already disposed of.  

Mr. Hollis contrasted spending with investing by saying that "Investing is generally about my future."  I think in terms of ECRM, investing in it is more about a long-term program for managing information versus a project.  It certainly will be a series of projects because you can't do it right in one step for the entire organization.  Investing in ECRM is about assessing where you are, deciding where you want to be and then plotting a course to get there, filling in the gaps between your "as is" assessment and your "to be" model.  Investing in Information Management is more than just implementing a technology solution.

Investing in ECRM is knowing where all of your data is in the event of litigation.  Investing in ECRM is building an Electronically Stored Information (ESI) data map (including physical content, too) and knowing in advance of litigation what kind of information the organization has, where it is and in what format.  Spending on ECRM is going through a fire drill of locating information whenever litigation becomes an issue.

Investing in ECRM includes managing the cultural aspects of a change in the way employees will be working that a program of this nature will certainly cause, ensuring that there is constant communication about the change and training people in how they will work moving forward.    Investing in ECRM means looking at the ways people work and ensuring as much as possible that the implementation either matches or improves the process that users follow today.  Spending on ECRM usually means IT implements some technology and hands it off to the user with a cheat sheet on how to use it.

Mr. Hollis points out later in his blog post that not every organization needs to invest in IT and the argument could be made for Information Management as well.  Organizations that don't have much litigation may not need a comprehensive ESI data map, but I contend that they need at the very least a basic map.  All organizations can benefit from being able to find the right information in a timely manner, so investing in ECRM components like a good taxonomy and a metadata model along with a good search solution will probably be a wise investment.  It will certainly help users in the organization to find relevant information in a timely manner when it is needed for decision-making.

I don't want to discount quick-win activities or other projects that lay the groundwork for other projects within the program that may seem to fit in the spending money versus investing category.  Projects like an orphan box inventory or a records clean-up day may seem very tactical in the big picture of an ECRM program and may not seem like an investment.  But they can be seen as an investment because you are organizing your paper files to aid in search or disposing of files that are past their retention period and could cause issues if they were still in the organization's possession during litigation.

What is your goal in terms of spending on Information Management?  Is it to spend as little as possible or to invest in it so that it improves the organization?