4 Reasons to Act Now on Information Governance
This blog post is the second installment of a three-part series featuring the importance of information management and governance in today’s work landscape. Check out the first blog:
Microsoft 365 (M365) usage is increasing exponentially, growing 17% year-on-year in number of users since 2021. On top of this, every person on Earth creates an average of 1.7 MB of new data every single second.
What are the implications for IT? In simple terms, the more records created and put into M365 repositories, the more content needs to be managed – so much so that there is predicted to be over 200 zettabytes of data in cloud storage by 2025. Worse still, even as the volumes of data still continue to rise, many organizations are already experiencing budget overruns of up to 40% on cloud storage.
A problem that isn’t going away
There are several reasons the problem of cloud storage is not going away for IT:
- Cloud storage costs continue to rise
- Microsoft has started charging a storage “overage” cost of $0.19 per GB per month
- Data can be moved or deleted on demand, but the fundamental issue remains the same
- Organizations are struggling to manage the information in a structured way
Together, these issues make it difficult for IT to plan storage budgets and strategies accurately — the lack of insight results in a potentially unmanaged sprawl of data. Inconsistent retention policies and a lack of control over data ownership, lifecycle management, and categorization can also affect regulatory compliance.
Without proper processes or user training across the organization, it can also be unclear “when to use what”. Lines are blurred over where collaboration and responsibilities lay.
Information governance and information management
Information governance programs are a proactive way to manage an organization’s technologies, policies, processes, and strategies employed to optimize information in order to meet its business needs. They also help satisfy legal and industry regulations while minimizing risks.
With well-planned information governance procedures, the creation, valuation, use, storage, and deletion of data can be appropriately controlled in a way that allows the organization to achieve its objectives.
Information management describes how the information is managed across its lifecycle (capture, manage, store, classify, distribute, preserve, and delete). This encompasses responding reactively to information requests, managing archiving policies, and deleting older data as dictated by information-governance policies.
Adopting well-planned information governance and information management programs helps solve the cloud storage dilemma. Here are four reasons why you should act now:
1. Protect and preserve proprietary information
Organizations need a process to safeguard their vital information from competitors and unauthorized access. Information management provides a system for protecting proprietary information from intruders, system failures, and natural disasters. It helps protect the confidentiality and integrity of vital information assets, allowing the owner to derive maximum benefits from their trade secrets.
2. Improve productivity and efficiency
A great information management system can improve how employees store and retrieve information required during their daily activities. It can also make it easier to disseminate information to diverse recipients via multiple channels, allowing teams to collaborate and communicate easily across time zones and locations, as well as extract actionable insights from its records to guide decision-making.
Dive deeper: Office 365 Hours: Getting Started with Information Governance and Records Management
3. Reduce operating costs
Modern workplaces need an efficient information management system to reduce the cost of record keeping. Data collection, data analysis, and information storage, sharing, and destruction are capital-intensive activities, especially for large organizations. Information management prioritizes the most important records, reducing expenses throughout the information lifecycle.
4. Reduce risk
An important function of information management is to reduce the risk of potential legal and financial implications for the organization. This is achieved with a well-defined protocol for recording, storing, disseminating, and destroying data. This reduces the chance of breaches and improves compliance with regulatory requirements.
Making your information work for you
With AvePoint Cloud Records, information managers can manage end-to-end information lifecycles, not just focus on end users. It allows them to navigate common records compliance requirements, create retention and disposal schedules, and remove the burden of traditional records management in Microsoft 365, SharePoint on-premises, Exchange Online, and SharePoint Online.
Learn how to navigate common records compliance requirements, create retention and disposal schedules, and ensure secure information management by requesting a Cloud Records demo today.
