Category: Information Management

Remote Work is Here to Stay

This March, it will have been three years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns and, thus, three years since the explosion of remote and hybrid work.

Remote work was nothing new before this. Decision-makers and digital-industry professionals have taken advantage of technologies that enable remote work as long as they’ve been available, staying on top of their work from their home office, while waiting at airports, or in hotel rooms while on business trips.

Remote work has also enabled international and inter-regional collaboration between organizations for decades, expanding the horizon of viable partners and clients to include any organization with reliable internet access, no matter where they are in the world.

When the lockdowns hit, however, the number of people working remotely increased exponentially. It had to increase if the economy was going to keep moving without endangering millions of lives.

In a matter of days, the portion of the economy working remotely ballooned from a small handful of important decision-makers, writers, and I.T. professionals to everyone who could possibly do their job from home.

Nearly three years later, after the release of vaccines, fluctuating mask mandates, and long after the last official lock-down restrictions, many people have come back to the office to work. But not all of them, not even close.

What has the pandemic taught us?

The necessary experiment with remote work that happened during the pandemic has yielded some interesting outcomes, both for society at large and for individuals:

The full potential of remote work was explored and expanded.

Employers had to figure out how to keep their employees working despite the circumstances. If a job could possibly be done remotely, it was. If not, workers either had to work in person (essential workers) or find other ways of paying the bills.

The pressure on employers to stay afloat with a physically decentralized workforce resulted in innovative new operational methods and organizational restructuring.

The pressure on individuals and organizations whose line of work was not compatible with an online business resulted in creative new software and remote business models, expanding the industry.

Organizations had to re-assess the value of their commercial property.

“How much was having an office space really contributing to our effectiveness?” For some, the experiment with remote work showed just how important a physical workspace is for their business model. Others found out that businesses could carry on more or less the same without physical office space and are still running entirely remotely.

Traditionally, physical office space was usually seen as a normal and even legitimizing part of doing business. But the pandemic showed that not only is a fully remote business both viable and legitimate, but most already viable and legitimate operations can be made fully or mostly remote.

Individuals have learned whether remote work works for them.

For some individuals, remote work was a silver lining in scary times.

Working from home meant no more commuting to and from work, complete control over their work environment, and a much more flexible work schedule that allowed them to handle chores between work tasks.

Some working parents especially value remote work, as it allows them to keep an eye on their children while working, cutting out childcare costs.

For others, though, remote work made everything worse.

While some saw the elimination of their commutes as time saved, others saw it as a ritual that was no longer providing structure and routine in their day.

While some preferred to work in a comfortable environment that they control, others found it hard to be productive surrounded by distractions and in a space also used for leisure.

While parents of older, more self-sufficient children may have preferred working nearby, younger children who need more active childcare became a huge strain on their parents’ stress and productivity.

Conclusion

The important thing for organizations to keep in mind is that the general workforce from which they want to attract talent now knows just how well or poorly remote work works for them. In a broad sense, the pandemic changed the labour market by revealing, creating, and solidifying simultaneous demands for in-office and remote work among workers.

In fact, a recent survey by financial advisory firm Hardbacon revealed that over 80% of Canadians in remote or hybrid work arrangements would rather find a new job than go back to the office if required by their current employers.

In some sense, this isn’t surprising. When the pandemic lockdowns hit, they shattered the traditional view that legitimate or “normal” work arrangements are being exclusively in-person. This revealed new options to the wider workforce: hybrid and remote work; and it seems like they’re here to stay.

The implications for companies wanting to transition more of their workforce back to in-person is that they’re likely to run up against serious resistance and should perhaps consider alternative ways of boosting productivity.

Prospectively, however, organizations looking to attract new talent need to keep in mind that, where they are practically feasible, hybrid and remote work options are highly desirable employment features for many workers.

However, accommodating remote and hybrid work options is easier said than done for many organizations. While newer companies probably started with full digital integration, many larger, older organizations are still reliant on information stored in paper and possibly even microfilm records.

While physical information formats may sound like a minor issue, accessing, securing, sharing, and duplicating these records is far more expensive and time-consuming than it would be with digital records.

30 years ago, the digital revolution introduced computers and other digital technology to the business landscape.

In 2020, the pandemic introduced remote work as a consistent demand from workers, which has, in turn, made digital integration a necessity for any competitive business or effective organization.

Consentia offers fully custom-built digitization and digital integration solutions for any organization or business, with full transparency and expert guidance. Transitioning your data and information infrastructure into the digital world opens up numerous benefits and opportunities.

Whether you want to increase your ability to offer remote and hybrid work options, securely preserve your information for the future, or leverage powerful communication and analysis tools, our digitization experts would love to help you accomplish your goals.

February 10, 2023

Disaster Preparedness: Protect Your Information

Disasters can come in many different forms, from natural disasters like floods and earthquakes to security breaches and catastrophic technological failures. Regardless of the type of disaster, they all have one thing in common: they can cause serious damage to an organization’s data, information infrastructure, and reputation. The difficulty is made even worse if the data you lose or the infrastructure that’s compromised would have been critical to your recovery and damage control efforts.

That’s why it is so important for organizations to be prepared for a disaster before it happens. Disaster preparedness involves taking steps such as strengthening security measures, creating backups of important data, and developing a plan for recovering operational capacity quickly after a disaster occurs. In this article, we will discuss some of the ways that organizations can prepare for a few broad types of disasters.

Technological Disasters

Technology can be a great help to businesses and organizations, but it can also bring its own set of potential risks and disasters. When technological systems fail, the results can be catastrophic for a business. Outages, data loss, system crashes, or power surges can cause serious disruption to operations and lead to long-term damage.

In the past, the only organizations that needed to prepare for technology failures were those whose operation was centred around information or computing. More than 30 years into the digital age, however, nearly every organization larger than a family business utilizes some form of digital technology in their core business processes.

More than just being common, integrating digital tech and the internet into your operation is functionally required if you want to be competitive. Without some kind of internet presence or the ability to send and receive information digitally, you’ll have trouble doing business or partnering with most other organizations.

What this ubiquitous dependence on technology means for today’s organizations is that every one of them needs to be prepared for a tech failure. What would happen if a power surge hit your head office? How much would an extended blackout disrupt your operation, and how badly? What other options do you have?

The specific steps your organization will need to take to prepare for a tech disaster are going to depend on your unique circumstances, but here are some good first steps:

Ensure all of your computers are on surge-protected power lines. With modern electrical infrastructure serious power surges are relatively rare, but they do still happen from time to time. When they do, they’re impossible to see coming, so it’s best to be prepared, just in case.
Ensure that all of your critically important technology, that is, the machines and systems you can’t live without, are somehow replaceable. Odds are that the most important tools in your operation aren’t particularly cheap, but you should have a backup plan if you were to somehow suddenly lose them.

Catastrophic Mistakes

Everyone makes mistakes now and then. Usually, those mistakes are relatively minor, like spilling your coffee on your clothes before a meeting. Sometimes, however, a mistake can be a lot more serious, like losing millions in a phishing scam.

While mistakes of this severity are rare, it would be unwise to pretend that they’re impossible. It’s bad enough when a catastrophic human error costs your organization a large amount of money or time, so it’s best not to compound that crisis by not having procedures to respond to them.

As much as possible, and at every level of management, try to consider Murphy’s law in each critically important business operation, and encourage your managers to do the same in their own domains. The point is not to become paranoid about every possible problem, but by deliberately considering each possible mistake you will probably come across possibilities you hadn’t considered before.

Security Disasters

Security disasters can be especially costly for organizations. Security threats range from cyber-attacks, data breaches, and malicious software to insider threats, identity theft and even physical security threats. In the worst scenarios, these disasters can cause severe damage to a business’s reputation and finances and may lead to long-term operational disruptions.

To protect against security disasters, organizations need to have robust security policies and procedures in place. Security protocols should cover every aspect of the business’s digital infrastructure, including devices that access the internet, local networks, mobile phones and other devices.

Organizations can also benefit from investing in strong anti-virus software, firewalls, two-factor authentication and encryption technology to protect against malicious activity. Security policies should also include training for staff members on how to identify suspicious activity, as well as regular security audits and assessments.

By investing in these disaster preparedness measures, organizations can better protect their data and operations from potential disasters. By being proactive in protecting their information, organizations can minimize the risks of suffering a disaster and help ensure their long-term success.

Natural Disasters

Natural disasters can have a profound impact on an organization and their ability to protect and recover its information. Extreme weather events, such as hurricanes and wildfires, can cause catastrophic damage to businesses – not only in terms of the physical property but also in terms of the data they possess. Data loss due to natural disasters is often caused by a lack of power, damaged or destroyed hardware, or even the inability to access the premises.

Organizations should have a plan in place that outlines how they will protect their data and operations during natural disasters. This could include investing in reliable backup systems, hosting cloud-based backups and replicating key datasets offsite so that they can be accessed in the event of a disaster.

Natural disasters are the hardest to predict and prepare for, so the most reliable way to protect your information is to distribute backups in more than one physical or digital location. If your organization still primarily relies on physical formats for its information storage, it’s taking an unnecessary risk. Digital information storage comes with a host of benefits, but the most important is the ease with which you can duplicate and distribute digital files. Compared to almost instantly uploading or copying a digital file, duplicating physical files is expensive, time-consuming, and bad for the environment.

Contact us today to find out how digitization can elevate your organization and keep your information safe, even in the worst-case scenario.

January 20, 2023

The Costs of Poor Information Management (Part 2)

Part 2: The Latent Costs

In the last part, we discussed what poor information management looks like in practice and some of the direct, immediate costs. There are two more things that organizations lose due to poor information management, but which are not directly tied to one of those four pillars: cohesion and reputation.

These are not small, immediate, direct costs of poor information management, such as delays in service or correspondence, but the way that relevant individuals react to those immediate costs.

Organizational Cohesion

We have already discussed organizational unity and coordination in the section on information distribution in part one. There, these terms referred to the ability of an organization’s constituents to function together, a question which is concrete, behavioural and operational.

Organizational Cohesion, on the other hand, has less to do with concrete behaviours and more to do with attitudes.

When an organization collects too little valuable information or too much useless information (poor acquisition), it becomes more difficult to organize and secure (making poor custodianship more likely) and, thus, more difficult to distribute properly.

Employees or members who want to do their jobs well will understandably become frustrated if they are not equipped with the information they need to be most effective. Such frustration is often attributed, fairly or unfairly, to other members or departments of the organization, thus building resentment and distrust between members.

Those members who intrinsically believe in the organization itself and want to see it succeed will be alienated and discouraged by what seems like avoidable dysfunction and may even lose their faith in the organization.

Members frustrated by the dysfunction that results from poor information management will either seek success elsewhere or try to reform the organization (if they have the means). Such reform efforts can be the solution to the dysfunction, but this requires that enough members agree that such reform is actually necessary and that there is no irresolvable disagreement between them about what those reforms should look like.

Without agreement about the need for reform, reformers will be pitted against non-reformers, creating more frustration and resentment. Disagreement about how to reform the organization will also create frustration and resentment. Furthermore, even if everyone can agree about the solutions needed, there’s a chance that they will be the wrong solutions, worsening the problems that caused all of this discord in the first place and thus leading to further dissonance.

Of course, these problems are not unfixable, and many stable organizations go through successive periods of stagnation and reform, and the dissonance and then cohesion that results. But it’s clearly better to avoid or minimize these problems as much as possible by maintaining strong and reliable information and document management systems; prevention is better than a cure.

Reputation

Information management is far from the only thing affecting your organization’s reputation. Still, as a potential source of problems and the means by which you address problems, IM deserves special attention.

As already discussed, poor IM limits the effectiveness of your organization. This immediate cost results in a latent cost on your reputation with partners, clients/customers, and your most motivated employees.

The impact on your business partners and clients/customers is obvious: poor quality service or products won’t go unnoticed and will factor into their future decisions about whether to work with or buy from your organization in the future.

The impact on your most motivated employees doesn’t get as much consideration, however. Most members of an organization are motivated (at least to some extent) by money, career progress, and status. But some personally identify with the organization, making its success and mission their own.

While intrinsically motivated employees are valuable, they are also more likely to be alienated by dysfunction than those motivated primarily by compensation or career status.

An employee who comes to work only for a paycheck is likely to roll their eyes at frustrating dysfunction at work, do the best job they can under the circumstances, and then go home and forget about it at the end of the day.

Employees that want the best for the organization, on the other hand, face a conflict between their identification with it and the dysfunction they perceive. Some will resolve this by trying to reform the organization from within, but only if they believe that they can have an impact. Those who perceive the problems as insurmountable or their own potential impact as too limited to make a difference; these members are likely to stop identifying with the group entirely.

This internal loss of reputation can thus lead to higher turnover and greater difficulty attracting top talent.

Information Management Issues are System-Issues

Every organization has an information management system, even if it’s not deliberate or formalized. Your organization needs to put most pieces of information it acquires through multiple steps and personnel for it to be as useful as possible (e.g. receiving a document online or by mail -> filing it appropriately -> distributing it to those who need it -> eventual destruction).

Problems in one area tend to cascade into others, eventually spreading throughout the system. Delays and mistakes made at any point will accumulate as the information progresses through the processing system, slowing down the organization’s responses and decisions.

This interconnectedness means that small problems which are ignored will gradually develop into larger ones and that these larger problems take a long time to resolve, as they need to be uprooted at every stage in the system.

The result for an organization’s leadership is that these sorts of smaller problems need to be taken seriously and addressed early on; to be recognized for what they are: the start of something bigger.

Digitization makes excellent information management easier.

It can be easy to think of poor information management as merely the result of poor decision-making and negligence by an organization’s leadership, especially in the abstract, and especially when considering another organization and not one’s own.

The unfortunate reality that many organizations eventually face is that information management problems sometimes arise due to factors outside of your control. A limited budget prevents onboarding more staff; honest and unforeseeable mistakes create new problems or worsen existing ones; or unexpected crises arise, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, which challenged every organization in new ways.

No matter how well your organization has handled information throughout its history, the future is unpredictable, and responsible leaders need to take steps to prepare for whatever may come their way.

One way to enhance organizational resiliency is to move to a strong digital information management system. Systems dependent on paper involve longer and more frequent delays, greater space requirements, greater risk of information loss, and greater ongoing costs in paper and printing.

Digital systems are more secure, require far less space to store large amounts of information, and allow you to send and receive files instantly or work on them remotely. All of these features save you resources and give you and your team more options.

If your information management system is dependent on paper, or if your archives are buried in outdated microfilm formats, digitizing these files with Consentia is a great way to increase organizational flexibility. Leverage all the benefits of digital information systems by getting in touch with one of our experts today!

January 13, 2023

The Costs of Poor Information Management (Part 1)

Good records and document management are essential for any organization to be successful. Records and documents provide the foundation for decision-making, legal compliance, operational efficiency, continuity of operations, organizational learning and knowledge sharing.

Without good information practices and policies in place, an organization will be less responsive, effective and cohesive. Records management is the practice of identifying, organizing, preserving and disposing of records, as well as providing access to them when needed.

Part 1: What does poor records management look like?

Records need to be managed throughout their entire lifecycle, which includes four parts: acquisition; custodianship; distribution; disposal. Here’s what good and bad information and records management look like at each stage.

Acquisition – How do you get your information?

Acquisition is the first part of the lifecycle of records and documents, and it is a critical step in making sure that information management practices are effective. Records acquisition entails the identification, selection and collection of records – both physical and electronic – with the aim of capturing as much relevant information as possible while distinguishing it from unnecessary, irrelevant information that won’t be helpful.

Collection can be either passive, as in making it possible for people who want to send you helpful information to do so, or active, as in researching and seeking out valuable information to inform executive decisions and organizational policy.

Bad Acquisition either involves not enough collection or collection of the wrong information (or both). When it comes to passive acquisition, organizations need to try to minimize barriers to incoming valuable information while creating and strengthening barriers against useless information.

So, for example, it should not be difficult for customers to volunteer information to enhance their shopping experiences, such as their preferences or contact information. Or what if a business partner wants to send you documents and information about an exciting development in your partnership?

Not only should it be easy for either to give you this information, should they choose to do so, but the means by which you passively collect it need to be secure and well organized. The customer entrusts your organization with this information under the implicit assumption that you will be able to keep it safe and that it will be used to their benefit. The business partner needs to be able to rely on the security and responsiveness of your shared communication channels to be confident in the partnership. None of this is possible if either of these kinds of information gets lost in a disorganized information management system.

But good collection practices aren’t merely about ease of receiving information. You wouldn’t want a random stranger to be able to get a hold of members of your leadership team to waste their time. You also don’t want to be flooded with an endless amount of useless information. Not only would this waste your storage space and time, but it also makes it harder to identify and access important incoming information.

Good Acquisition = high quantities of high-quality information + low quantities of low-quality information + high-quality organization of that information.

Custodianship – How do you store and protect your information?

Custodianship is the second pillar of information management, and it refers to the practice of storing, protecting, and maintaining records and documents within an organization. It can involve both physical and digital storage, as well as backup strategies for protecting against unintentional or malicious destruction of information.

Records custodians are responsible for ensuring that all the information an organization has acquired is secured, organized, and accessible when needed.

Bad Custodianship can lead to a few different types of disasters for organizations. Records get lost in an unorganized storage system due to poor indexing or failure to establish procedures for the retrieval of information. Records can also be lost due to a lack of information security and backup strategies. Records can also become inaccessible due to technical problems, such as an inability to retrieve them from storage media.

These risks are especially heightened if an organization is storing records in multiple physical and digital formats, which can lead to different access and security protocols for different types of records. Records can also become vulnerable to unauthorized access and manipulation if they are stored on unsecured servers or networks.

All of these risks can lead to an inability to respond effectively, both internally and externally. Records may be lost or tampered with, leading to legal trouble or a lack of trust between parties. Records become inaccessible, leading to delays in decision-making or communication. Records may also be erased due to negligence or malicious intent.

Good Custodianship = secure storage systems + robust access protocols + backup strategies that include both physical and digital media.

Distribution – How do you get the right information to the right place?

The third pillar of information management is distribution. This refers to the process of getting the right information to the right place, person, or group in an efficient and secure manner. Records management systems enable organizations to distribute digitally stored documents and records quickly and securely while also ensuring they are signed off on by the appropriate personnel.

Distribution processes that are badly managed can lead to a few different types of issues. Records may be sent to the wrong person due to inaccurate or out-of-date addresses and contact information. Records may also not reach their destination if they are sent via an unsecured medium, leading to data leakage or theft. Records may not be tracked properly, leading to confusion over who has access to the information and where it is located. Records may also not be signed off on by the appropriate personnel, leading to potential legal issues or miscommunication.

One way to think about any organization is as a decision-making machine. Members at every level of authority, from executive leadership all the way down to front-line employees, are constantly making decisions about the best way to achieve their goals and get their jobs done. Poor distribution of information within an organization starves each decision-making unit of the information they need to make the right choice, forcing them to delay or make poorly informed choices.

This also means greater disunity and poorer coordination as an organization. If lower-level decision-makers (i.e. employees and middle managers) have to make decisions without good information or delay a decision until the information reaches them, it makes them less predictable to upper and executive management. Without knowing what circumstances and choices confront your subordinates, your leadership will be less decisive.

Good Distribution = accurate contact information + secure data transmission protocols + efficient tracking systems.

Disposition – Where does your information go when you’re done with it?

The fourth pillar of information management is disposition. Disposition refers to whatever happens to a record or document once it has outlived its usefulness. Destruction of the record is a common choice, so common that the two terms are often used synonymously. But choosing to archive a record for posterity also counts as disposition.

Organizations collect information for specific purposes, and once this purpose expires, it can be easy to forget about it. Many organizations have hard drives or filing cabinets filled with an increasingly disorganized array of old documents, much of which could be disposed of without sacrificing any important information.

As already stated, archiving old documents which are no longer useful is a legitimate choice for disposition. However, passively accumulating an ever-growing collection of files because no one takes the time to organize them or separate them from more current information is not archiving; it’s hoarding.

However an organization chooses to dispose of their documents, its solution needs to be active and informed.

Active and informed disposition policy means re-evaluating a record and whether it should be retained before it becomes a problem. One way to do this is to make setting a review date for each record part of the standard acquisition process.

Active and informed archiving of old records means separating them by degrees of relevance so that those kept merely for posterity don’t crowd out those that may need to be referenced in the near future. It also means maintaining an organized archive with helpful metadata conventions.

Active and informed destruction means understanding the retention policies and regulations of your jurisdiction and when those legislations allow you to destroy the record, as well as why this record will not be useful to the organization in the future. Once the decision to destroy a record is reached, it also means ensuring and confirming that the destruction is total so that information security is not compromised.

The costs of poor disposition practices are information security vulnerability and storage inefficiency, one of which is far more troubling and urgent than the other, and for good reason. However, neglecting the health of your information storage for a long enough time can lead to serious problems too.

Digitization makes Excellent Information Management Easier

When thinking about poor information management in the abstract or in another organization, it can be easy to think of such problems as merely the result of poor decision-making and negligence by an organization’s leadership.

If that were the case, all you would have to do to avoid those problems is pay attention and make better choices.

The unfortunate reality that many organizations eventually find themselves in is that information management problems often arise due to factors outside of their control.

A limited budget prevents onboarding more staff; honest and unforeseeable mistakes create new problems or worsen existing ones; or unexpected crises arise, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, which challenged every organization in new ways.

If your information management system is dependent on paper or if your archives are buried in outdated microfilm formats, digitizing these files with Consentia is a great way to increase organizational flexibility. Leverage all the benefits of digital information systems by getting in touch with one of our experts today.

January 6, 2023

Downsizing with Digitization

With prices rising and office space getting more expensive in most major cities, many organizations are looking to downsize their office space to save on costs, increase efficiency, or prepare for future growth. This often involves removing unnecessary office furniture, making individual workspaces more collaborative, and/or incorporating more hybrid and remote work options for employees. But another way to save space that may not be as obvious is moving away from paper.

When considering storage problems, paper documents are usually not the first thing that comes to mind for many of us. After all, a few sheets of paper only occupy a tiny amount of space; even a hundred pages are almost nothing. But as many office managers know, paper files can start to pile up quickly. Whether they’re kept in boxes, drawers, or filing cabinets, large volumes of paper documents take up space that could be used more effectively. If these collections are regularly accessed, they’ll require constant maintenance to keep them organized, draining valuable employee time and energy.

But you have that paper for a reason. The information contained in those pages is valuable, and it’s not like you can just throw them away. That’s where digitizing comes in. By turning your paper files into digital documents and storing them on a local hard drive or a cloud storage server, you can massively condense the amount of space they require while also opening them up to a huge number of other benefits, like remote access, a variety of organizational tools, and better security options.

There are two ways to digitize your paper files and clear up space: scanning and data entry.

Paper Scanning

Using specialized scanning equipment, you can quickly turn many paper pages into digital images or pdf documents. This option is great for text documents and diagrams, especially when used in conjunction with Optical Character Recognition software, which allows a computer to recognize the text in the image, letting you highlight, copy and paste, or search through it with ease.

While this may sound like something you could just as easily accomplish with a photocopier, specialized scanning machines can process stacks of pages far faster than flat-bed scanners like photocopiers. This makes them perfect for larger projects with hundreds or even thousands of documents.

With top-of-the-line equipment and refined digitization processes, Consentia can process large collections quickly and efficiently. We can also scale our operation to match our clients’ budgets and needs, and our experienced scanning specialists can adapt to your organization’s specific needs.

Data Entry

If the information in your paper files is standardized or quantitative, you’ll probably want to aggregate that data into an organized spreadsheet at some point. Spreadsheets organize all of the important information into one place, making sophisticated analysis and visualizations possible.

Scanning pages only creates digital copies, which is great for text documents but isn’t very helpful with raw data. That data needs to be extracted from the documents and then aggregated before it can be useful.

The value of manual Data Entry digitization is that operators digitize files while simultaneously extracting and aggregating important information. This makes the process simpler and more efficient than scanning and extracting/aggregating afterwards. It’s also more efficient in terms of digital storage space, as it doesn’t require you to temporarily store full images of pages before aggregation.

Consentia’s manual data entry services are scalable, adaptable to your specific requirements, and always double-checked to ensure accuracy.

You can drastically reduce storage space requirements by digitizing your paper files while unlocking access to advanced organizational tools and improved security options. Scanning and data entry are both viable options for digitizing paper documents, with each providing specific benefits that make them more suitable in different situations. No matter what method you choose, Consentia can help you digitize your files quickly, efficiently and securely.

If you’re ready to start downsizing storage requirements in your office, contact Consentia today! Our experienced team is ready to answer any questions you may have and get started on your project. Get in touch today for a free quote!

December 16, 2022

How to Prepare for an Office Move

Packing up your office and moving it to another location is always a complicated process, but being well prepared can reduce the likelihood of complications and problems, saving you time, money, and stress.

Choose the right moving company.

Depending on your organization’s size and industry, you may be able to move your office without the assistance of a specialized moving company. However, just because it is an option doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best option. You may spend more money doing it yourself, in labour costs and lost productivity than it would have cost to contract a dedicated mover. In any case, it’s best to consider all your available options before deciding.

Here are just a few of the many options for moving companies here in Edmonton:

Company	Google Business Rating	Benefits*
Alta Moving	4.8 stars (125 reviews)	Also offers seacans, portable offices, and portable and traditional storage options Packing services included Disposal of large items included Free rental of 25 moving boxes with a quote
Action Moving	4.7 stars (462 reviews)	Nearly 35 years of experience Additional services available: site survey, layout optimization, file cabinet anchoring and levelling, and more
Office Move Pro	4.7 stars (31 reviews)	Manufacturer-certified office installers Climate-controlled storage space available in Edmonton GPS vehicle tracking
AMJ Campbell	4.5 stars (183 reviews)	Over 85 years in business Over 500,000 businesses moved Additional services available: space planning, furniture consultation, disassembly and reassembly, and more
Right Move	4.1 stars (152 reviews)	Also offer moving consulting services Off-hours moving services to get the job done after business hours and on weekends if necessary
Alberta Top Notch Movers	4.1 stars (55 reviews)	No hidden fees 15-minute billing Over ten years of experience Packing services included Optional storage space

*As described by the business on the website linked here

Ultimately, we can’t decide which moving company will be right for you and your situation. It’s best to get in touch with moving companies early, get a quote, and discuss how their process works. For a large complicated move to go smoothly, everyone involved should feel comfortable working and coordinating with each other.

Plan ahead, plan well.

As the old saying goes: “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” Planning ahead helps you anticipate potential obstacles and come up with viable solutions before you need them. The larger your office is and the more things you need to transport, the more complicated your process will be, and thus, the more preparation and planning you should do. Here are some steps you can take to ensure things go smoothly:

1) Take Inventory

Moving can often be an excellent opportunity to reset your layout and make everything more organized on the other end of the process. But it can also become a chaotic headache with paper files and other items getting lost or further disorganized. The best way to prevent this is to ensure everything is organized ahead of time.

One of the first steps you’ll need to complete is taking everything out of your filing cabinets, desk drawers, and other storage locations and putting them in more portable moving boxes. This is an excellent opportunity to go through each storage location and ensure everything is stored in a way that makes sense. If you have any collections of unsorted, miscellaneous files, now is a great time to sort their contents into the appropriate boxes since everything is moving and rearranging.

While it may feel like keeping everything inside and sealing the doors on these furniture pieces would be the simpler way to go, most of them are designed for storage, not transport. This means they are likely too heavy or awkwardly balanced to be safely and conveniently transported with their contents inside. You’re better off moving everything into well-organized, labelled moving boxes, which your moving crew can carry or stack easily.

As files and folders are moved from cabinets and drawers into moving boxes, task a member of your organization, or a team of members, to record which folders went into which containers. Indexing boxes by department, floor, or some other grouping schema can also be helpful with large offices (e.g. “Box 1-1” for the first box of floor/department one).

Once all your files are sorted, compile the records of what went where into a comprehensive inventory of your files. At the end of the process, you’ll use this inventory document to confirm that nothing went missing, so hold onto it.

2) Condense the furniture

Once all the drawers and cabinets are empty, start packing all the non-essential furniture tightly into a back corner. This will free up space for walking past and give you a sense of how much space your items occupy when packed tightly together. That, in turn, will help you choose the right-sized moving truck and estimate the number of trips you’ll have to make.

While efficiency is important, you can’t forget about safety, so make sure that any stacked furniture is arranged safely. Freeing up a few extra square feet of walking space by stacking heavy objects too high isn’t worth the risk of damaging them or, more importantly, injuring your staff or moving crew.

3) Conduct a safety walkthrough

Once everything is stacked safely to the sides and prepared for the move, walk through the whole office one last time with a few members of your team, ideally anyone who will be involved in the moving process. Start from the entrance to the office and work your way through every walkway, looking for any potential hazards as a team.

Loose wires, rugs, and other tripping hazards should be cleared away to prevent falls, even if they seem obvious and easy to avoid. Remember that people will be walking through this area carrying heavy objects and not paying as much attention to where they place their feet.

Approach any stacks of furniture or other items and give them a gentle push or shake. If they wobble or lean in a way that makes you uncomfortable, it’s probably better to take them down. During the move, someone may bump into them while focusing on what they are carrying, so it’s better to be safe than sorry.

4) Plan out the new office space

Planning where you want everything to go in your new office space will make the delivery portion of the move smoother than if you have to decide where each item goes on the fly.

Like with the file inventory, go through the office and make a list of types of furniture you have and how many you have of each. This list will be used to help you plan out the new office’s layout, so don’t include any furniture pieces you plan to dispose of during the moving process. If your layout is segmented into discrete sections you plan to recreate in the new space; then it’s probably best to organize your furniture list according to each.

Depending on how much time you have or how compact your new office space will be, it may be worthwhile to record the measurements of each piece along with the type and quantity. If you don’t have the time or don’t anticipate much difficulty making everything fit, then recording some rough estimates of each item’s size should suffice.

If possible, go to the new office space with some relevant team members and at least one person from the moving crew to plan out the new office layout. Consult the furniture inventory you created earlier to ensure each item is accounted for in the new space.

5) Plan out the move itself

Now that you have the old space prepared and the new space planned out work with your moving team to plan out the step-by-step process by which the move will proceed. Considering the available walkways, labour and moving tools available, the planned layout of the new space, and any other relevant details, decide which items from which sections should be moved first.

Ultimately, there are far too many specific and circumstantial factors for any sweeping generalizations, but here are a few guidelines to consider, in rough order of importance:

Start near the door: all else being equal, it’s best to start from the section closest to the office’s exit and work back toward the outer walls. Moving the items near the back before those in the front will mean maneuvering around them to get to the door.
Start with the section which will be furthest from the door in the new space: a smooth delivery from your current office to the new area involves both an efficient packing up of the items and an efficient deposition into the new space. Applying the same principle above, consider which items will be the least in the way once you start filling your destination.
Larger items go first: by moving the largest items in a section first, you free up space quickly and make packing the moving truck easier and more efficient. As space in the truck is filled, the remaining space available becomes increasingly awkward and unforgiving. Ending with the smallest items makes it easier to fill those unusual spaces, saving you time and decision-making energy and keeping each load more compact and efficient.
Keep wait and fragility in mind: while it is good to start with the larger items, sometimes the smaller items are denser and thus heavier when occupying the same space (e.g. heavy boxes of paper files). Packing many heavy, if compact, items on top of a large piece of furniture which was not designed to hold that much weight can result in serious damage.

When estimating how long the moving process will take, unfortunately, it’s best to be pessimistic. You should hope for the best, of course, and plan to make it happen, but you should also be prepared if things take longer than expected. Like with any other multifaceted process involving many people and steps, there will inevitably be complications and delays.

Depending on how much time you have, estimate the amount of time that each step in the moving process should take, including the drive from one office to the other. Identify chokepoints which could slow things down, like elevators or stairwells, and plan for possible hold-ups or delays.

If at all possible, spread out the parts of the process that won’t disrupt workflow across multiple days. For example, if you have access to the new space before the moving date, you’ll save yourself stress and time by having some smaller items move earlier.

While detailed planning can help you anticipate and plan for potential problems, no plan is perfect, and it’s best to assume that something will come up you hadn’t prepared for. Once you have a combined estimate of how long the process should take from start to finish, add another 20% to that time. This will give you a margin to account for complications and problems that you couldn’t see coming.

What if you didn’t have to move your files?

If your office has a large volume of paper files, you can save yourself a lot of work and worry by getting them digitized before the move. In fact, the lead-up to a move is the perfect time to enhance your information management with digitization, since you’ll have to pack all those files up either way. Digitizing means that you won’t have to unpack them at the new location, however, saving half of the work of moving your files. Plus, once your information is digital, you’ll never have to move it again, making any future office moves simpler and easier.

Digitizing your files also gives you the option to spread the process out before the move, making the day of the move less stressful. This is especially helpful if you don’t have access to the new office space until the day of the move, as it gives you a way to clear out some of your cargo ahead of time.

Any time you digitize, you’ll need to create a list of all your files to verify later with the service provider, the same kind of list you would have to make before a move to verify that nothing went missing.

The point is, moving your paper files is a significant portion of the work of an office move. Digitizing them instead takes significantly less work, can be done gradually ahead of time, and only needs to be done once, preparing you for any future moves as well.

Get in contact with us today to find out how digitization can help make your office move simpler and easier, and ensure that your organization is more flexible and resilient on the other side.

December 9, 2022

Information Management: Why it Matters

Information management is the process of using technology to store, organize, protect, and utilize information. It can be used in many different contexts, such as businesses, educational institutions, and healthcare. In a business context, Information Management helps organizations better track their data, control it more effectively, and use it to make more informed decisions. By implementing an effective information management system, businesses can increase their efficiency and effectiveness, better control their data and information security, create stronger relationships with partners, and access valuable insights into the marketplace.

The Benefits of Good Information Management

1: Efficiency

The primary benefits of good information management start with organizational efficiency. A well-implemented Information Management system will help an organization to quickly locate and retrieve data or documents when needed, which in turn helps to streamline processes and increase productivity. An effective system will also provide better control over their information, enabling organizations to securely store and access it when necessary, while preventing unauthorized users from accessing the data.

And, of course, greater business effectiveness means better profits. That doesn’t always mean reduced costs, however. Improving your information management system may require some increased spending to modernize your information infrastructure, hire consultants, or dedicate valuable executive time to re-evaluating and innovating your practices and policies. But with streamlined information processes, better control over your information, and fewer bureaucratic inefficiencies, you’ll be refining your operation (saving on future costs) and increasing revenue through better marketing and more effective business relationships.

2: Control & Security

Another major benefit of good information management is better control over your information. As with anything else, control requires awareness. Not only will an effective system provide quick access to data and documents when needed, but it will also keep better track of incoming information, as well as the information you’ve already got.

Information you don’t realize you have, sitting unnoticed in some hard drive or filing cabinet, could possess a potential value that you’re not leveraging. At the very least, even if it’s not very valuable, it would be better to know you have it than to let it take up space unaccounted for.

Even worse is information you think you have but don’t. Without comprehensive inventories and metadata of all of your information storage, you might falsely assume you have access to an important file that was actually lost or never even acquired in the first place. The false belief that you have all the information you’re supposed to can prevent you from seeking it out and acquiring it, possibly even long enough that it becomes impossible

It can also help organizations prevent unauthorized users from accessing their information, while still providing access to those who need it. This helps organizations keep their data secure, while still streamlining processes and making sure that their valuable resources are well utilized. Two of the primary goals of good information management are information security and organized and efficient storage. These are often summarized under the virtue of “Custodianship.” Good custodianship of information is good control over it. Without good custodianship, information won’t always go where it’s supposed to, leaving segments of your organization without the information they need, and possibly even leaking sensitive information out into the wider world.

3: Acquiring Valuable Intel

Good Information Management can also help an organization become more effective by making it easier for them to make decisions based on accurate and up-to-date information. This will allow them to access insights into customer behaviour, market trends, or other important data that can be used to inform their decision-making. Without effective policies regarding the acquisition and organized storage of information, these kinds of insights may stay out of your organization’s reach or may be impossible to leverage due to disorganized storage.

4: Better Business Relationships

Furthermore, an effective Information Management system makes your organization a more valuable business partner. An organized system is attractive to potential partners, who may be uncertain of your organization’s ability to manage the data they share effectively. This can also help an organization by providing them with access to information regarding non-competitive organizations in a particular industry. Having up-to-date and comprehensive intelligence on competitors, potential customers, and other market players helps you stay competitive, and choose equally competitive partners.

Conclusion: Better Information Management = Digital Information Management

The advantages of digital technology in information management speak for themselves. Digital technology allows for faster, more accurate search capabilities and storage methods that are both secure and organized. It also provides easier access to valuable data and insights from partners, customers, and competitors. An effective Information Management system is essential for any organization looking to remain competitive in the 21st-century business landscape.

Digitization services are the best way to bring the information from your paper files into the digital world, letting you get the most value out of your information, while also giving you the control and security needed to stay competitive. By leveraging digital solutions, your organization can easily realize the benefits of good information management: greater efficiency, better effectiveness, more control over their data, enhanced security, and better relationships with partners. With the right Information Management solution in place, your business will be well-prepared to navigate the digital age.

November 10, 2022

An Intro to Information Management

In order to meet their information management needs, many organizations develop formalized Information Management Systems (IMS). The complexity of a particular Information Management System lies in the complexity of the information involved, and the complexity of the organization and its operation. The field of information management is the study of these IM solutions, what makes some better than others, and how to improve them.

In this blog post, we’ll briefly introduce the primary domains of information management, and the goals that organizations should have for each when developing their own Information Management System.

The Four Domains of IM

Acquisition

Goals: Accessibility, Efficiency, Organization

“Acquisition” is how you generate, collect, or receive information. For example, an invoice from a service provider you’ve hired would be received via physical or electronic delivery (i.e. paper mail vs email), whereas an SOP manual written by your employee is “acquired” in the sense that it has been generated internally.

For most organizations, excellent information acquisition is as simple as making it easy for people to send you information in a variety of commonly used formats. It should be as easy as possible for partners, customers, or clients to send you information or documents when they need to.

However, if your organization’s business model is centered on information, excellent acquisition may actually be enormously important and complex. A social media company, for example, wants to collect as much information about their platforms’ users as possible, in order to maximize the effectiveness of their targeted advertising. A research and development firm, on the other hand, would want to be able to quickly and systematically interpret and incorporate complex information.

The end of the acquisition stage blends into the custodianship stage, as files which are “acquired” need to be stored somewhere. Good acquisition is not just about the volume or quality of the information collected, or the ease with which it is received, but also about where that information ends up in your storage.

Custodianship

Goals: Organization, Security

This is a broad term covering how the information is stored, including how it’s organized and how it’s protected. Generally, good custodianship involves effective, intuitive organization and strong, comprehensive security. So a loose pile of all your paper invoices jammed into a safe is not good custodianship, but neither is a well organized but totally unsecured online folder.

An important part of custodianship for any organization with a large number of files is using an effective and logical indexing schema; in other words: how are your files and folders organized, and why? One way to think of an indexing schema is a list of types of information about a file (i.e. metadata) arranged from most broad to most specific, and/or from most important to least important.

An example of an indexing schema might be “Department> Year> Project> Purpose> Type> Format> Date Created.” With this schema files are sorted by department, then within department by the year they were created, then within that year by the project they’re relevant to, and so on.

Creating the best indexing schema for your organization will mean considering the operational context, the extent of your storage needs, and the organization tools at your disposal, among other factors. Whatever your schema ends up being, though, it needs to be applied consistently to all of your storage. That way, it can be learned once, and used to effectively navigate to any file in any collection.

Distribution

Goals: Accessibility, Efficiency, Security

Distribution overlaps with custodianship quite a lot, as it involves how information, and access to information, are distributed throughout your organization. A well organized collection is easier to distribute and access. Part of secure and effective custodianship of information is ensuring that sensitive information is properly distributed only to those with permission to access it. So, for example, good distribution of your invoices would involve making them easily available to your accountants, and not to employees that don’t need access to them.

There’s two ways to think about distribution: passive and active. Passive distribution of information is the distribution of access to information, such as who in your organization has access to which file storage locations. Active distribution involves sending information to members of your organization, rather than just making it accessible to them.

So after you’ve received an invoice, for example, and you’ve stored it somewhere organized and secure, you could either leave it stored in a specific folder for your accountants to access at their leisure, or send it directly to their accounts. Whether to choose active or passive distribution for any particular piece of information will depend on the operational context and your team members’ preferences; one is not inherently better than the other absent those considerations.

Disposal

Goal: Compliance, Security, Diligence

Disposal is exactly what it sounds like: what you do with your information when it’s no longer of use to you. Excellent information disposal involves good information security, compliance with legislation, and diligence.

Compliance.

Every step in good information management involves understanding and complying with the relevant legislations about records management, and this is probably most true of the disposal stage. Most jurisdictions require organizations to hold onto important records for a number of years after they’re created, even if they’re no longer relevant. These rules exist to keep organizations accountable, as even records which are a few years old can be used to assess the compliance or non-compliance of an organization’s practices.

Understanding how records retention and disposal legislation apply to your operation is crucially important, as disposing of a record before it’s legally allowable could be seen as an attempt to hide evidence of illegal activity, regardless of whether it was intentional. (Check out our blog on retention periods in Canada to learn more about how to remain compliant.)

Security.

But good information disposal doesn’t end once its retention period has ended. Even if you have permission to dispose of a file, doing so in an insecure way could come back to hurt you.

For example, keeping financial records in secure storage will be pointless in the long-run if you just throw them out as whole, readable documents when you’re finished with them. Nothing that contains banking info, social security numbers, personal addresses, or any other sensitive information should be readable when you get rid of it. (Learn more about compliant and secure disposal in our blog on disposal legislation in Canada.)

Diligence.

Finally, good disposal means frequent and intelligent disposal. Just because a record has passed its retention period does not always mean it should be disposed of right away; some records hold operational and archival value for many years after their immediate relevance has passed.

But not every record does. Holding onto important records because you know they still have value is responsible custodianship. Holding onto unimportant records you’re legally allowed to dispose of because you forgot about them or because you worry that they might have value is just wasting storage space. In small amounts, this is a small problem, but it’s best to stay ahead of it before it grows into a large one after years of neglect.

Disposition doesn’t just mean destroying records when you’re done with them, it can also mean moving them to long-term archival storage. Rather than simply holding onto everything in the same place for as long as possible, good custodianship means deliberate, prompt disposition decisions for each record at the end of its lifecycle. Consciously deciding what happens to your records and keeping track of these decisions is an extension of good custodianship. It will also save you storage space and make it easier to track down old archival records should you ever need them in the future.

Practicing Good Information Management

One simple way to assess and improve on your organization’s management of information is to think about how it handles each of these four stages, and how well it achieves each stages’ goals. Below is a set of questions we recommend asking yourself about each stage of your information management. Try writing out specific, concrete answers to each for best effect. We will be creating a downloadable version of this checklist and sending it out with one of our bi-weekly newsletters, so subscribe to make sure you don’t miss it.

Acquisition

What options for sending physical or digital documents to your organization are available to people? To your partners? Your clients or customers? To strangers?
Which existing avenues for contacting or sending information to your organization are used most frequently? Which ones are under-utilized? Which are the simplest or most direct?
Are there any potential avenues for contacting your organization or sending information to it that have not yet been adopted? Which options seem most valuable/efficient?
How easy would it be for a stranger to get in touch with your organization? What about getting in touch with specific members (i.e. sales staff, managers, etc.)?
What comes up when you search for your business on Google? What information would be valuable to include that’s not there already?
How much information does your organization collect per month on average?
How many documents/files are generated within your organization per year?
Where does each type of file go when it’s received or generated? Where is it first stored?

Custodianship

How fast would you be able to retrieve any given file within your organization’s collection?
How quickly or easily would a brand new member of your organization be able to find a specific file only using the indexing schema, without assistance?
What would a bad actor from outside your organization have to do to get access to your sensitive files? What obstacles would they have to overcome?
How many information security breaches has your organization had in the past?
How likely is your information to be targeted by bad actors trying to steal or leak it?
Do you have any old archives of records? When was the last time they were thoroughly re-evaluated or reorganized? How long would it take to do it again?
How often is your indexing schema re-evaluated and updated? How well is your current indexing schema serving your larger operational goals and organizational strategy?

Distribution

Would it be safe for every member of your organization to have access to every file in its possession?
Which files (if any) should not be accessible to your entire organization? Who should they be accessible to? What precautions are in place to ensure that access to them is restricted?
How satisfied are your organization’s staff with their ability to access information? Have there been any complaints from staff about access?
Are there any operational delays which are attributable to information delivery? If so, how might these be remedied?

Disposal

Does someone in your organization know the required retention periods for all of its records? Which records need to be kept indefinitely?
If you have any old archives of records, how many have passed their retention periods? How many could you delete, destroy, or move to the archive to save space?
How does your organization typically get rid of old paper records? How secure is your destruction solution?
How does your organization get rid of old digital records? How secure and how total is that destruction solution?
What does your organization do with records once they pass their retention period? Is there a formal policy in place?

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