Information Management - Being Metrics Driven can't hurt

Why Metrics Matter in Information Management

Back in 2017, I wrote about the complexity of the "16 Essentials for Building your Content Services Strategy." 

It all boils down to this: information management has a lot of moving parts.  At the time - Sixteen.  Sixteen different facets that organizations need to think about, manage, and improve.

Let’s be real: that’s too many, no wonder organizations are still paralyzed by this complexity!

Like what you see? Want to see more? I invite you to chat with my team at Shinydocs.

If your personal trainer told you all you had to do to be in good shape was to master everything, and then handed you a list of 16 different things, you'd probably give up before you even start.

But here’s the thing - each of those 16 items does matter.

Both in information management and in fitness. 

But before we go further, let's take a look at what's actually on the list.

What are today's 16 Things to Score in Information Management?

From data access speed to compliance, security to discoverability, each of these dials plays a role in how well your organization handles information.

1. Content is aligned with Business Need first – not IT Convenience (See my chat with Town of Milton for more)
2. Access content the same way, whether it is on-premises or cloud and intuitively on desktops, web, and mobile. (See my chats with Dunedin City Council and Susan Gleason for more)
3. Scale beyond petabytes.  Allow file sizes to scale beyond gigabytes (See my blog on the Channel Innovation Awards for more)
4. Share the same flexible permissions structure. 
5. Share content outside your user domain where permissions allow. 
6. Secure content in transit and at rest. 
7. Have a consistent revision and version history for content. 
8. Create a standard of redundant and fault-tolerant content. 
9. Apply flexible metadata to content. (See my blog on a better way to apply metadata for more)
10. Access content offline. 
11. Expire content consistent with records management requirements. 
12. Apply taxonomies (sparingly) described by both parent-child and metadata relationships to content .
13. Search content by metadata and full text (See my blog on real-time information for more)
14. Accessibility & Performance 
15. Private information stays private (See my chat with Ann Cavoukian for more)
16. Data is has fast accessible and portability - essential as a launch pad for AI

Complexity Isn’t the Problem. Lack of Metrics Is.

The problem isn’t that there are too many dials. The problem is we don’t measure them effectively.

Some of these dials even conflict. For example, accessibility and security often pull in opposite directions. Compliance might slow down productivity. That’s just the nature of the beast.

But even when they’re in tension, each of these elements is important. So what do we do?

We start by scoring.

Why You Need a Score

Imagine being able to report things like:

• “We’re 8/10 on data accessibility.”
• “We’re 3/10 on information privacy.”
• “We’ve improved 2 points on compliance since last quarter.”

That kind of language resonates with your leadership, your board, and your stakeholders.

Without it, it’s just “we made things better, trust us.”

That’s why Shinydocs is building toward a future where you can see a score across these various dimensions of information management. Not to overwhelm you with data, but to guide you. If you don’t know how much data you have, that’s a 0/10. If you can’t ask questions about your documents, that’s a 0/10.

But now, you can measure that. And improve.

Focus on the Winners and the Losers

You don’t need to optimize all 16 things at once. That would be chaos.

Instead, find your strengths. Maybe you’re a 9/10 on findability and that's a perfect area to double down your effort to see if you can turn that into a 10. You can do this with all of your winners.

Then identify your low scores, understand the tradeoffs, and decide what to fix next.  

What matters is that you know where you stand and where to go next.

You could do the same thing with the fitness list. Maybe you're disciplined about working out and have a 9/10, but you're only a 4/10 when it comes to fueling your body with the right food.

Now, you know where to put in your effort to meet your goals. 

The Bottom Line

Being metrics-driven isn't just helpful. It’s essential.

Especially when the people reviewing your performance (your board, your compliance team, your customers) speak the language of KPIs and dashboards.

You know you improved records performance. Great. But can you prove it? You can with measurable progress!