Deanna O’Connor speaks to Nik Healy, Solutions Director of Convergent, about solving document and business information overload

Before you read on, think about your personal document and data storage. You have messages coming to you via email, texts, WhatsApp, DMs on Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. You might store various documents and images in email, on your hard drive, Dropbox, Google Docs, Google Photos, Microsoft OneDrive, iCloud, and perhaps some actual paper in drawers in the kitchen or a filing cabinet in the home office. You scribble some notes in a notebook, but others on a notes app on your phone. All your work appointments are in your online calendar, but that dentist appointment next month – that’s on the family schedule stuck on the fridge door. You’re just one person, and it’s already hard to keep track of the amount of information and documentation you’re producing and storing. Now, extrapolate that out to a large organisation with hundreds or thousands of people, and it quickly becomes overwhelming and highly inefficient.

“When it comes to businesses, small and large, it’s a massive problem,” says Nik Healy, Solutions Director of Convergent, a document and information management consultancy with a mission to help businesses dissolve the boundaries of information flow and bring an end to content chaos.

He recounts a tale of one large organisation which was using over 900 different applications. “That’s the extreme, but it’s something we always see, the proliferation of information and duplication of information across multiple systems, that causes chaos.”

Systems Overload

According to recent research conducted by Convergent, 63% of Irish businesses report using up to 10 different systems and applications to store information, and 23.7% of respondents operate more than 10 systems across their businesses. This disconnected scattergun approach to information storage and usage prohibits information from flowing and results in inefficiencies and manual processes. It also restricts reporting and business intelligence opportunities.

“It’s very difficult for anybody to find the correct information and the right versions of version of documents, and more importantly, to be able to understand the context of information,” Healy says.

Harking back to the days of paper-based filing, he points out that everything was at least, organised by one system, in one place. “At least there was there was structure. But nowadays, I give the analogy that it’s like having filing cabinets, but all the labels and the classifications have been removed.”

Clearing the Chaos

Data analytics and AI offer such incredible possibilities, if you can leverage what you have. But you can only leverage what you can find.

“In order for companies to take that seriously, they’ve got to first tackle the issue of their information sprawl and information chaos through their organisation because AI is not going to sort that out. It needs structure, it needs data. It needs to understand how information is stored

in order to get the context of what it is and give users a meaningful interpretation.”

While we are still early days in the deployment of AI, having structures in place that are necessary to support it will be key.

“There’s a belief out there that there has to be a better way of doing things, and it is being driven by the proliferation of information nowadays – the amount of information being generated is growing exponentially. On top of that, there’s the administrative burdens that organisations have to deal with around compliance,” he says. “They are spending on administration of their information, rather than being able to use that information to be more creative and productive.”

The root cause of problems for a lot of companies stems from what Healy calls “functional decision making” – acquiring software and systems for particular functions of the business, for example HR, leading to siloed information, with different systems in different departments.

“Another example is health and safety in the construction and engineering industry,” he notes. “It has ballooned to the point where it is unmanageable. They might have the information in a nice app that is user friendly, but the data isn’t going anywhere, it’s just sitting in the cloud. It’s not actionable. It doesn’t communicate with anything else in the organisation – it’s a completely siloed set of information that nobody can access information isn’t flowing.”

From the ground up

As Convergent has evolved its information management consultancy business, Healy has worked with client organisations of all sizes, from enterprises to start-ups and SMEs. He says working with the smaller businesses is most rewarding, when he can reach them at the right time: “It’s a great opportunity to influence these organisations and get them set up for future growth,” he says.

While it can be a gargantuan task to make a difference in large, departmentalised organisations – “it’s like turning the Titanic,” he jokes – he relishes the opportunity to work with younger companies. “When they are in an expansion phase, they are really keen to build in efficiencies into the organisation, so it’s a really sweet spot to deal with those kinds of organisations.

“They know they have to get their house in order if they want to continue to grow because it’s a competitive market out there and every percentage point makes a difference to survival or not.”

That being said, he maintains that there is hope at enterprise level (“it just takes three times longer to do it”). Managing change is key to success in any setting he says. “The business process owners have to be involved and champion this. When you get that interaction and that engagement, you’re off to a head start.”

For anyone thinking of making positive changes to organise their content chaos, he advises, “Think big, start small.” And failing that… call in the experts.