The Great Transformation of the Digital Records and Information (PDIN) Process in a Remote Work World
In March 2020, the traditional concept of the modern office was disrupted in the most literal sense possible. The pandemic caused a sudden paradigm shift in the way knowledge workers operated. Overnight, most office workers had to leave their usual ways of working and adapt to working from home. This change immediately tested the technical readiness to support the remote workforce and their ability to access critical information needed to perform their tasks.
The transition
The transition has been sluggish because the majority of companies continue to sustain the past. The offices we abandoned were designed around paper-based business processes through M&A advisory. Even the prototypical office furniture includes massive file drawers for storing and organizing paper.
The need for distributed and remote workforces to access the same critical information is pushing businesses to break paper dependency quickly. The cost of transitioning from paper to digital processes can be justified by the potential to eliminate real estate and related costs associated with maintaining paper. By moving directly to digital, rather than defaulting to paper and then converting to digital, businesses are finding that they can be much more efficient, collaborative, and productive.
The big unintended result of all of this is that we have realized that the gradual digital transformation of business has evolved to the point where it is possible to work from home and be productive, maybe even more productive.
Integration of systems into the digital process = PDIN
In my view, we have entered a new era of records and information governance. A new paradigm and long-sought industry transformation have taken place (or is actively underway for some companies). There is no doubt that a new era in digital records and information processes (DRIP) is now upon us. Two letters are missing. The G for management has been dropped. Why? Because it is no longer the burden of the function. It was automated in the process. And what about the governance G, which we worked so hard to bring into the function? It is also now inherent and a natural attribute of records and information.
Before you all voice your disagreement on Twitter, let’s take a look at where we are right now. The return of the office is incidental. It disappeared, literally overnight, in mid-March 2020. The result exposed the obsolescence of manual, paper-based processes that have remained entrenched in the records and information management model for decades, as well as in information governance.
Benefits of DINP
By transforming your records program from a manual process based on handling physical and paper documents, you have the opportunity to adopt PDIN. The PDIN creates an increasingly automated digital process. As the pandemic has demonstrated Digital Records, if your records are digital (and stored securely in a digital/cloud repository), you will be able to access them from anywhere, including your home office. Additionally, you can now begin to integrate systems and processes.
Many lines of business methods are created around a specific function, not records management. Storage and access to records, especially in a regulated manner, is at best incidental. Process integration allows you to offload this function to a more specialized system intended to do so.
There are four different approaches to get digital transformation:
Convert paper by scanning
Modification of the management of active files
Addressing old files
Keep processes digital
Here are further explanations of these tactics:
Digitization of inputs
To accelerate the pace of moving from paper to digital, or to move to a digital-only model, the paper must be prevented from entering the workflow. If you capture and convert any incoming paper at the entry point, you can immediately put it into a digital format so knowledge workers can maintain a constant digital process.
Classification et indexation
Going digital also creates a chance to computerize the categorization procedure with the help of an M&A advisor. This reduces the time spent on indexing while creating consistency. Manual indexing is notorious for human error and inconsistency, as each user must exercise judgment in classifying and organizing information, often without fixed standards. This is another example where a specialized system can provide this capability.
Reduce hard copy storage
As the shift to a digital process progresses, the need for offsite paper storage should become minimal. When you’ve reduced it significantly, you can start dealing with the old stock and the associated costs of maintaining it. By not adding new stocks and Digital Records eliminating existing stocks. The numerical process solves the first part of the equation. The second part needs a few steps to fulfill a justifiable maintenance program.
Simply put, when everyone took their laptops and left their desks, some of the records and information followed them home and some did not. The longstanding ability to access information from anywhere, in a digital format, through a well-governed native cloud application, was either in place or incomplete. Be that as it may, digitization became the obvious solution and the other obvious was whatever was creating a hindrance: paper. We have been justifying paper for far too long. The time has come to move on.
