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On Apr 6, 2005, at 2:55 AM, Paul Headey wrote:

> Although there are some great email management archiving systems 
> available , they don't provide the full picture required in the 
> management of all types of critical business content, hence the reason 
> why they need to be integrated with a third party EDRMS. (I assume 
> that this means managing 2 repositories but may stand corrected on 
> that if any one knows different. These systems very good that they are 
> plugged a functionality gap that wasn't addressed by the ECM/EDRMS 
> vendors up until now.

An excellent point, in that there is no legitimate reason any longer to 
consider managing two independent repositories, especially since the 
retention period for records is based on content, not source/form.

> The leading ECM/EDRMS systems now have the ability to automatically 
> archive email into the ECM/EDRMS repository using a rules engine or 
> allowing the recipients to us their discretion as to when email should 
> be managed as records. This has been achieved by the ECM/EDRMS 
> software vendors acquiring email archiving technologies and 
> integrating them with their ECM/EDRMS system repositories. The benefit 
> being the storage and records management of documents and emails in a 
> single unified repository.

While rules engines are improving continually, there are still many 
problems relying on fully automated systems for classifying and 
indexing records.  Much needs to be done at a human level to ensure the 
rules are being appropriately applied, including the development of 
organization-specific taxonomies, and taking it at least one step 
further to the business of specific portions of the organization.  The 
system also needs to be smart enough to know what it doesn't know and 
kick out the items it's less than a specified percentage sure about 
where it belongs (less than a 70-80% success). for manually 
classifying.

>  It is possible with some of the systems that we work with to 
> initially invest in just the email archive piece initially and add the 
> EDRMS client side functionality later. This makes for an initial very 
> low investment of the email client side technology of a few £'s per 
> seat plus the cost of the EDRMS server side licenses (The Repository). 
> This approach allows you to build the platform for a full EDRMS and 
> Email Archiving Solution in manageable stages in terms of both budget 
> and project implementation. EDRMS by stealth!!

Curious where you see this taking place in the marketplace... would be 
happy to hear from you off-line.

> In some organisations email management and archiving requirements due 
> to creaking overloaded email servers at risk of falling over and 
> creating a corporate communications outage, or having in place the 
> ability to retrieve emails efficiently from both a knowledge 
> management and litigation support perspective is deemed a much more 
> pressing business issue to solve than an implementation of a document 
> and records management system.

I see this happening more in organizations that don't have the benefit 
of a RIM Program... most of them are buying into a scare tactic from 
vendors and uninformed consultants that they "need to keep everything" 
rather than establishing good policies and business practices to keep 
them from getting in too deep.  As you mentioned earlier, if the e-mail 
content isn't something that rises to the level of a record (based on 
the organization's policies) then they don't need to manage it as one.  
I see there being essentially 3 "buckets" that e-mail can fall into:

1) Non-Record material, which should be disposed of as soon as 
practical and should NEVER make it into the e-mail MS or EDMS
2) Transitory records, which are required to meet some basic business 
needs, but have a retention of 2 years or substantially less
3) Record material, which needs to be properly classified and indexed 
and stored outside of the e-mail application

> Should any one want to know which systems can be implemented in this 
> manner please email me off list.

Again, I'd like to discuss this with you off-list, if you'd care to 
drop me an e-mail at [log in to unmask]

> I'd be interested to know from the forum what currently deemed is the 
> most pressing issue currently, EDRMS or Email Management.

Both, especially if you have neither =)  Or worse, if you have many 
ERMS scenarios...

> Are they matters that will be addressed by the same project members of 
> an organisation, or managed by different teams?

They need to be championed on high by the same individual because they 
ultimately serve the same need.  But organizationally/functionally, 
they may be supported by different parts of the organization.  
(Institutional applications vs. Desktop applications)

Larry