When offices were entirely paper based there was a process
of copying documents in triplicate. You had two sheets of carbon paper placed
equally between three A4s. These were placed in a typewriter to record the
information. The A4 at the bottom was kept for record while the other two
copies will go out into the world to serve their purpose.
Receipt books worked like that also with blue copying paper to create the company’s record while the customer kept the ‘original’. These systems worked well for their time. I still consider some of the old office processes to be ingenious and some are still valued today.
With the advent of information technology those systems were digitised to gain speed. That has been a success and allowed an increase in the volume of information produced and processed across all aspects of life. The approach to information processing is still influenced by those old office practices and this cross threading of ideas and technologies is proving costly.
Most companies maintain external network links with suppliers in order to exchange information. These collaborations are increasing as Cloud offerings become specialised, easy to adopt and cost efficient. There are three main types of links; send, receive and remote access.
These links into the company’s network must be recorded when they are set up and tracked until they are no longer needed. This record keeping is often handled in Excel. If there is a governance regime in place where the links have to be vetted via an iterative process, Excel begins to resemble a triplicate process that will not scale.
Here is a real world example: A team requests and fills out a form giving information on a proposed third party link; what type and class of information, who is responsible and how long it is needed, among other questions. The form requires access to the company’s policies and standards. Some of the standards are classified so users have to request a copy.
The governance team reviews the form and either approves immediately or enters into an interview via email, telephone or meetings. Email is the preferred method as it documents the discussion. This usually concludes with the link being approved whereby the applicant and the team responsible for installing the link are informed, via email.
The link form is entered into a database where the form’s information is copied into a header table to allow search.
The process is designed to allow information to be gathered via a dialogue and this is successful because the initial questions can sometimes lead to peculiar discussions as the nature of the project is explained. The email exchanges to a widening audience and the pulling together of multiple sourced data is where a costly bottleneck is formed. The classified standards are also exposed.
This is a problem that can be fixed by making better use of IT’s capability to mimic repetitive tasks, limit access, control versions of a document, broadcast a single version of the truth, act on events, schedule events and make information available when needed, how needed.
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