Why should you consider an Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) plan?
The answer is simple. We live in a world where technological demands are increasing more than ever. As a result, the amount of data that companies are creating has increased exponentially. Americans use 3,138,420 GB of internet data every minute. Organizations are receiving data in many forms to all areas of the organization, including structured and unstructured data. Organizational leaders can use some of this data to help them make more effective business decisions, however much of the data can put the organization at risk.
Implementing an Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) strategy is vital in order to achieve success with information economies. Preventing storage costs from spiraling out of control and having employees waste their time searching for information needed to do their job effectively should be of paramount importance for any business strategy moving forward. Removing unnecessary data will allow organizations to provide business users with an optimal performance from their applications, giving IT tighter control over storage costs and enabling the legal department to reduce exposure to organizational risk.
ILM will control your data growth by means of minimizing storage costs and increasing application performance. Additionally, it ensures your organization is compliant with data privacy regulations such as the GDPR & CCPA. Data that is stored longer, or shorter, than necessary creates a liability for your organization. ILM helps reduce this legal liability by ensuring your data is disposed of properly.
WHAT IS INFORMATION LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENT ( iLM) ?
According to Gartner,
Information lifecycle management (ILM) is an approach to data and storage management that recognizes that the value of information changes over time and that it must be managed accordingly. ILM seeks to classify data according to its business value and establish policies to migrate and store data on the appropriate storage tier and, ultimately, remove it altogether. ILM has evolved to include upfront initiatives like master data management and compliance.
When choosing an ILM strategy, you need to find a solution that addresses all aspects of the definition above.
BENEFITS OF INFORMATION LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENT
The management and retention of information is so important that an effective ILM strategy is an essential part of an enterprise’s overall strategy for dealing with challenges of cost, compliance, and risk.
Risk Aversion
- Reduce expired information
- Reduce the volume of unneeded information
- Reduce the chance of missing critical information when searching
Better management of information provides cost savings
- Reduce eDiscovery, storage, and legal hold
- Reduce “digital debris” by improving the ability to find critical information in a timely manner
- Reduce the volume of duplicates and non-valuable information by directly impacting the cost of discovery
Employees can focus on your core business
- Reduce the time spent on managing information and eDiscovery requests
- Reduce distractions of archiving, eDiscovery, and records management
- Reduce the resources needed from IT and Legal
Implementing an effective ILM strategy gives the organization a more effective governance strategy. ILM introduces controls that benefit the enterprise and improves the management of information for the entire business.
HARD DOLLAR COST SAVINGS
Provided below is a savings scenario showing the cost savings for implementing an ILM strategy.
SOFT DOLLAR COST SAVINGS
Studies have found that a knowledge worker on average spends 30% of their time looking for information!
Source: Delphi Group
Along with hard dollar savings, your organization will gain some soft cost reduction as well.
- Time saved from unnecessary document recreation and ‘reinventing the wheel’ = 18 hours per year
- Time saved from searching for information owned by others = 1.75 minutes per day
- Reduce the amount of manual administration required for knowledge workers to manage discretionary data = 1 hour per month
- Time saved and improved productivity for eDiscovery = 19,922 hours per year
HOW TO GET STARTED ON AN ILM STRATEGY
Developing a comprehensive ILM strategy can seem overwhelming as there are many issues to consider. Some of the questions to ask while developing your plan include:
- Where and how is data stored in the short and long term?
- Where and how to back up data?
- How to ensure data is accessible for e-discovery requests, compliance or other business requirements?
- How to ensure data is recovered in the event of a disaster?
- How to ensure data is protected if it is off-site or in the cloud?
- When and how to move data to a more cost-effective storage?
- How to ensure that corporate and legal policies are applied for data retention and disposal?
No matter the size of your organization, you are more reliant on digital data than before and part of your intelligent enterprise journey is developing an effective ILM strategy. It is a major business driver and innovator for organizations everywhere.
IS YOUR ORGANIZATION READY?
Most organizations grasp the business case for process alignment, though they struggle to establish disciplined process adherence. Digital transformation requires investment and action at all levels. Executives must be willing to challenge the ‘business as usual’ mindset and reevaluate existing business models in order to realize speed and agility across the entire organization. No organization can undergo a digital transformation using solely internal resources.
Auritas, the industry leader in Data and Content Management, delivers the solutions and businesses benefits you and your organization expect. The Auritas solution provides a compelling value proposition leveraging more than 150 accelerators, proprietary tools and processes to successfully deliver a scalable solution aligned with your corporate objectives and business requirements.
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