Firms fail to exploit document management software's full potential

Firms anxious to comply with governance regulations are missing an opportunity to build potentially valuable archives of unstructured data by rushing their deployments of document and records management (DRM) systems, according to a new report by the Butler Group.

Organisations need to look beyond compliance and explore how DRM systems can be used to save unstructured information in a central repository. Then emails and instant messages containing important information can be stored, accessed and shared to increase business efficiency, the report argued.

Report author Sue Clarke said, “Frequently businesses don’t look at how DRM systems can deliver business benefits and this means they have no end-user buy-in.” She added that the lack of planning means users often do not know how to use the system, cannot derive the information they need from it and cannot work the system’s search capabilities.

Clarke said the report’s findings were based on a mixture of end-user meetings and surveys.