Homework

North Texas Associates is a consulting firm that helps other business keep their information nicely organized so that they can have everything nicely managed. This business consults on strategy, operations and risk and compliance. This is helpful for other companies to figure out their long-term trajectory, when to make changes to departments, process management, procurement, outsourcing, regulations, minimizing exposure and compliance program.

North Texas Associates has been serving clients for the past 5 years in their Denton location. Currently employing 70 people, half of those now working in the southern location in Grapevine, expanding currently clientele. Currently North Texas Associates is working on its third location in Plano and hiring more employees to reach more of their new clients.

During this recent growth in the company, North Texas Associates has been struggling to keep its own date organized. Due to this new issue, it has been determined that a new consultant needs to be brought in who can develop an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) and Data Governance Policies and Procedures Manual to improve the company’s data organization.

Steps to ensure success:

1. Evaluate current data organization

2. Figure out how to incorporate ECM

3. Create new information infrastructure

4. Evaluate data governance policies and procedures

5. Create data governance policies and procedures

This is information that is not easily searchable. Those are things like:

· Text files

· Email

· Websites

· Mobile data

· Business applications

This is clearly defined data types such as:

· Client Database

· Human Resource Database

· Support Database

There are certain regulations when it comes to data that is being held by the company y that will depend on what clients’ organization. Examples of those data regulations could be the Gramm-Leach-Biliey Act, Fair Credit Reporting Act, Health Information Portability and Accountability Act and Telephone Consumer Protection Act.

This is information that is stored and secured in order to protect any data being breached. This is important when dealing with client information because they want to make sure their information is secure and properly stored.

To Make sure that this new project goes right the first time it is important to figure out the implementation life cycle. That just means we are going to organize in steps to try to ensure that this goes right the first time.

1. Selecting ECM and Data Governance Policies

2. Project Planning

3. Development

4. Testing

5. Application

6. Maintenance

Listed below will be descriptions of how each step will be carried out.

Selecting

First learning why and how ECM and Data Governance Policies will benefit the organization and security of data stored at North Texas Associates

Project Planning

Planning the implementation process of the project will be made and designed. Designating resources and selecting team members

Development

Creating alongside with consultant the ECM and Data Governance policies and procedures

Testing

Running tests to ensure ECM is running correctly and without errors

Application

One testing has been completed and data conversion is done along with work of the database is over, actually implementing the two will begin

Maintenance

Post-implementation every six months there will be tests run again to ensure the programs are running smoothly and all employees have learned how to handle the new EMC and Data Governance Policies and Procedures

In order to do a thorough evaluation of the ECM systems it involves looking at many areas of the company. It does not matter if there is already a system currently in place and formalized with certain software application and infrastructure or if there is an informal system in place. The areas that need to be evaluated are going to be the core components of ECM system.

· Capture

· Management

· Storage

· Preservation

· Delivery

Content capture takes place when information is imported into a secure digital repository. The types of documents that can be captured, created, stored shared or archived are going to be

· Invoices from vendors

· Resumes from job applications

· Correspondence

· Research reports

The ways that that documents can be captured is by electronic forms, scanning paper docs, managing content that is already digital and automatically filling and categorized documents. It is important to create a list of content that includes the source, format, use, and method of capture.

Example:

Content management is meant to be responsible for the creation, receipt, maintenance, use and disposal of records about any business activities and transactions. It is meant to maintain records of an organization from when data is created to when it is disposed of. This could possibly include classification, storing, securing and/or destruction of some data.

Content storage is the software application of how where and how content is physically stored and how it is organized. Just like with the other phases of evaluation, it is first important to document what the current system is. Next, a good place to begin is with a physical storage that can be identified and content could be mapped.

Preservation involves the long-term, safe storage and backup of data. Eventually this information will be phased out in the distant future and some will need to remain. Keeping content secure is very important. Content preservation is meant to make sure that content can later retrieved without having to rely on specific software or hardware. While evaluating ECM, some of the first content to be evaluated will be those that should be preserved. After that, it will make it easier to collected that information in the capture phase. Next, is figuring out how to preserve that data.

This is the pretty similar to the evaluations of the other steps. First, the content list is developed in the capture phase, processed in management phase, diagrams identified in storage phase to show how it will be delivered.

All the pervious sections of the ECM evaluation process all leads up to the final part of evaluating specific components of the ECM working together. It is important to look over the relationships to learn if there are any issues that might not have come up during the evaluations of other parts.

This next section is meant to evaluate the existing content management documented in the project before and document what improvements that will be seen in a better overall enterprise content management system. The improvements that will be seen are going to be in the areas of data management processes and data management tools.

Content Management Process Improvement

This section will review each of the processes identified in the Information Infrastructure Evaluation section and identify strengths, weakness, and opportunities for improvement.

Sales Process

In the figure below shows the current sakes process. Looking at the figure you notice it begins with manual forms, and the customer information being transferred to a data entry clerk, who then enters that information into the customer data base. There is absolutely no connection between the sales personnel and the customer data base, Therefore, information is not available for more use in any other sales-related process except by going through some marginally useful printed reports that are distributed once a month.