It’s there, lurking beneath the scaffolding of every organization. It is growing, spreading out of control. And, companies are paying dearly to keep it. It’s ROT—information that is redundant, obsolete, and trivial.
The battle with ROT is a common challenge in today’s business environment, given the explosion of information and the failure of many organizations to properly classify and manage it. In a recent AIIM survey, respondents provide some interesting insights:
- Two-thirds say their content is growing annually at a rate of 30% or more. The average estimate is 35%. Thirteen percent (13%) of respondents store over one petabyte of data.
- Only 7% delete information based on its business value. Seventy-three percent (73%) admit half of their content probably has no business value, but they don’t know which half.
- Thirty-two percent (32%) have a “keep everything” approach to deletion.
- One in five spend more than 25% of their IT budget adding and maintaining storage. The average is 16%.
Companies are unable to address ROT in their organization because they can’t identify it. They can’t distinguish the good information from the bad. As a result, the ROT continues to grow and costs continue to accumulate.
Poorly managed information hurts the business on many fronts. It’s not just the cost of maintaining exploding volumes of information. It is the damage to productivity and customer service that occurs when employees can’t find the information they need to do their job. It is the failure to manage and secure information in compliance with regulation and the increased risk posed in terms of non-compliance, security breaches, and lost business.
Progressive organizations are formalizing their records policies and looking to Records Management (RM) systems to protect, organize, and manage the entire lifecycle of their critical content. Solutions such as OpenText™ Records Management, eDOCS Edition (eDOCS RM) eliminate redundant information of all types, reduce time spent locating records, and mitigate the risk of litigation, fines, and other penalties.
eDOCS RM provides a completely secure, feature-rich records management solution from within the eDOCS DM library and integrates seamlessly with other products in the OpenText™ eDOCS Solution. Together, they provide effective and easy-to-use capabilities for electronic filing, managing information assets deemed to have value, and eliminating ROT within the organization.
