Does your data look a bit like this...

While you might have nice repositories of structured data (your CRM systems, finance platforms or stock control systems), my experience is that organisations are sitting on very substantial quantities of unstructured data. Those file shares and SharePoint sites which are always running out of space? Well, there's a reason for that.

If you're still clinging to the notion that this isn't what your data looks like then why not request an inventory of all your off-site paper archives? You're quite happy that all of that is within a defined retention period and fulfils the principles of data minimisation and data accuracy? And, your assumption that your digital storage repositories are in better shape is based on what exactly?

There's quite a few wrong ways to approach this issue. You could order your data by date, by business unit, by violations (PCI, PII, data of a given age or older, etc etc), you could hold business units accountable for the management of their own data. But, in the extremely unlikely event that you succeed in getting both the funding and mandate to do this, you'll start but you won't finish. The most rudimentary resource modelling will tell you the same thing.

But, astonishingly, while a lot of people are going at this the wrong way, my 8 year old son will offer you salvation. He will take a mess of nuts and bolts like the one above and turn it into this.

And obviously - we have just gone from a very high volume or laborious work which no one wants to do to a much more manageable exercise which delivers a number of benefits and capabilities.

But, of course, while my son can sort out a pile of rusty nuts and bolts, the issue of sorting through 20 years of data is a different animal altogether.

If only there was some sort of of software solution which would do this...

If you want a conversation, a demo or wish to explore the broader benefits of categorizing your unstructured data - get in touch. Doc Authority are successfully delivering this functionality to companies like yours now.