Thanks to those that have provided input thus far.  To give some background to my inquiry, I'm a little over two years into the long-term project of developing and implementing a records management program from scratch for my organization, which is 14 years old.  The methodology that I have used so far has been to devise a strategy for evolving the organization from an undesirable current state to an ideal future state, business unit by business unit, over a number of years.  The time that it will take to complete the project depends totally on the resources that I'm provided to do the job (people and dollars), and, so far, my company has been ok with things moving at a pretty slow pace.

My first year here was spent doing background work, e.g., educating senior management on the various elements that make up a RIM program; drafting a corporate RIM policy; describing both the current and future states; getting executive buy-in, etc.  During the second year, in addition to business-as-usual RIM tasks and activities, I've worked with two business units (Human Resources and Tax), taking them through the whole RIM evolution continuum, including share drive reorganization and clean-up and using third-party vendors to purchase legal research to support retention schedule development. As we move into the third year, my senior management -- which is comprised heavily of change management/project management types -- have realized that we've got a lot going on in the organization that needs to be folded into a more integrated vision and strategy for overall document management, and I'm leading the initiative to define what this vision and strategy will be.

Our electronic environment is built on shared drives, and most of our departmental file plans (if the department even has a file plan) need a lot of clean-up work.  We have no DMS and no ARMS but we do have SharePoint, which we are developing as our intranet platform and as a collaboration tool for departments and groups working on projects.  We also have a couple of specialized custom document repositories and, of course, function and industry-specific databases and email.  The goal is to develop a strategy that will eliminate future shared drive abuse and avoid having the use of SharePoint turn in to the same type of dumping ground that shared drives typically turn into.  I already know what I want this strategy to look like, and I'll be happy to share with the list once the draft is finalized and approved.  However, my management team wanted me to provide a couple of benchmarking examples from other organizations.  Being a somewhat conservative bunch, they want to feel confident that we're on a standards and best practices based path, not off on some tangent that no one else has tried and proved worthy.  Hence, my plea for a few examples that I can include in my presentation.

Again, thanks so much for taking time to respond, and I'll keep you posted on my progress.

--Lee


Lee R. Nemchek, MLS, CRM
Vice President, Records Management
Oaktree Capital Management, L.P.
333 South Grand Avenue, 28th Floor
Los Angeles, CA  90071

p +1 213 830-6252   f +1 213 830-8504
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www.oaktreecapital.com

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