If you are familiar with SharePoint as a document management platform, you may have noticed how easy it is to use. Some say, it is so easy that it is hard to use correctly and productively for many businesses.

Having weak or nonexistent information governance can make it extremely difficult for any business to reap value from document management technology. The following are some of the worst information governance problems your business can have:

1. One group (ex. IT or Legal) exclusively owns information governance.
2. The group that owns information governance believes that no other group should have stake in it.
3. The group that owns information governance would prefer it to be owned by another group.

The way to turn these weaknesses around is simple. Information governance should be shared by IT, Legal and Compliance and the lines of business. All groups must work together to ensure that all requirements regarding information governance are considered as IT system development is taking place.

How do you get these different groups to work together? EKI-Digital has broken this down into three steps that are the “diet and exercise” of information governance – they may not be easy but they are necessary.

1. Gain organizational alignment. The governing bodies need to understand that information governance should be a strategic priority across the board and all executive leaders need to understand that.

2. Appoint a provisional body. This body will design the business’ vision for information governance. This is not to be a single owner. The goal is to have a cross-functional team to work on this. Though it may take longer than appointing Legal or IT as the provisional body, it will prove to be more effective in the end.

3. Start with fixing the short term. Stop the bleeding issues and address them at once. It is important to fix what is broken before you can move on to developing a new strategic information governance plan.

Though an issue with SharePoint may not seem like a big deal, there is often a deeper answer than merely managing SharePoint better. While getting information governance right at your organization won’t make your SharePoint challenges magically disappear, it will be a struggle to solve them until you do.

By supporting collaboration and content management, SharePoint can quickly you’re your organizations solve challenges around lost productivity due to disconnected people and teams, slow turnarounds, untapped or underused expertise, and even outdated IT systems that are difficult to scale.

EKI-Digital has worked with businesses of all sizes, and in various industries to help them benefit by designing, and deploying effective SharePoint solutions, to improve how their businesses run, grow and transform. If you would like to learn more about our approach please contact us at info@eki-digital.com.