As you can probably tell by now, having a Single Source of Truth is incredibly important, regardless of what industry you operate in. As a starting point, a Single Source of Truth provides you with easily accessible information in one ecosystem, without siloes. Plus, you can understand when your systems are lying to you.
How often are you presented with incomplete information in your role?
When you don't have all the relevant information to hand, you have a compromised view of your project and client work, and the biggest risk to any company is a false sense of security. It can cause massive problems with compliance as you won't be able to report on processes that are being followed quickly, and it can be challenging to determine where mistruths are.
The first step to creating a Single Source of Truth is to ensure that all project and client information is easily discoverable as and when you need it. And, given the vast majority of correspondence is stored within email systems, from project agreements and scope changes to complaints and contracts, it makes sense to establish email as the foundation of the Single Source of Truth.
Email's ongoing prevalence is hard to debate. Majority of people use email for more than 80% of their project correspondence, and it is the preferred communication of 73% of business professionals. As a result, the average office worker receives 88 emails and sends 33 emails every day, which adds up to roughly one email every 12 minutes.
Finding specific data within this mass of email communication is a difficult task that increases in complexity upon completing projects and client information work and as people move on from the company. And, this isn't helped by businesses not having the tools in place that enable them to discover and unlock the information.
Businesses also continue to suffer a human error issue, whereby employees fail to file correspondence consistently or correctly. Human error runs the risk of critical or sensitive information being hidden within their inboxes or getting lost completely. As a result, employees waste time searching for the information they need to complete a client request or locate a document for an important meeting.
Businesses can address these issues and pave the way for a Single Source of Truth by ensuring necessary project data is saved in one central location that is easily accessible and provides simple search capabilities. Plus, it's time to move away from traditional document and records management, where information is occasionally saved to a server or on the cloud, or paper documents are filed in physical folders, to a more modern view, with a complete document, records and correspondence management.
As organisations store ever-increasing volumes of digital information, it's becoming increasingly critical to efficiently and securely manage and store data.
A recent study by Blissfully found that a typical company with between 51-100 employees use 79 different apps within their workforce. So, how can you be sure all this data is effectively managed?
A recent study by Blissfully found that a typical company with between 51-100 employees use 79 different apps within their workforce.
Companies need to ensure their information is appropriately organised and enable employees to find the information they need when they need it. It
is also essential to maintain version control, establish a Single Source of Truth, and digitise physical documents.
This process makes it easier for people to search for documents, find them quickly and prevent information from being lost or filed in the wrong location.
These benefits are critical for organisations in highly regulated industries such as legal firms, healthcare providers, financial advisors and architecture, to name a few.
Ensuring documents and correspondence are filed appropriately and easy to find is critical to meeting compliance requirements and guaranteeing security, helping businesses detect and prevent malicious behaviour and minimise the opportunity and threat of human error.
Plus, good information management can help streamline the time and cost consuming processes of organising documents manually.
Similarly, records management provides a process for businesses to meet their legal requirements and comply with increasingly stringent data privacy regulations regarding evidence of business transactions, legal jurisdictions and specific regulation compliance.
It helps companies implement strict auditing policies and processes that ensure well-documented systems, which is critical for being audited and avoiding substantial fines or legal action.
It allows businesses who operate in industries where data retention is strict by helping to implement processes around access controls, audit trail maintenance, data retention periods and inventory management.
Document and Records management are crucial as organisations manage and maintain growing volumes of information in various formats. As this volume of data increases, so does the risk of legal compliance failure, collaboration errors, data duplication and increased storage costs.
By having the right solution in place, you can remove these risks, increasing data discoverability, and saving yourself time wasted on filing data into the correct location or scouring vast email inboxes and file repositories to find the documents or correspondence you need.