Last week at the ARMA New England EMPOWER25 Conference in Boston, something struck me.
During sessions, in the hallways, and over lunch, the conversations kept circling back to the same realization:
Records managers and information professionals are finally ready for AI.
As you know - readiness isn’t enough. If we want to unlock AI’s potential in information management, it starts with how we position this technology to our stakeholders.
Like what you see? Want to see more? I invite you to chat with my team at Shinydocs.
The Start with High Impact Use Cases Everyone Can Agree On
Across the sessions and conversations, heads were nodding in agreement about two core use cases for AI in information management:
- Natural language to metadata: Imagine asking a question of your documents and instantly getting answers as metadata and tags that live with the document. No developers required. Faster, smarter, more powerful classification. The audience made it clear: they want this. Tagging is a word that the room understands (but their bosses don't). We can automate this task, and the Records Managers can focus on taking the right business action based upon this metadata.
- Operationalizing AI in practice: IT wants to be the owner of all things cool tech. They want to tell you the tools to use, so we need a strategy to empower info pros to leverage know-how while bringing IT in for support. This is the area where most organizations stumble.
Align with The Right Priorities to Pave the Road for AI Search
We all agree we want to find and use or tag the right information, but how do we actually do it?
It comes down to positioning AI initiatives to stakeholders in a way that builds confidence and aligns with organizational priorities.
Here’s what I recommend:
- Priority 1 - Security First: IT and Info Pros are aligned here - we're both worried about cybersecurity and privacy. The pitch is about how this solution is software only - you are in complete control - no third-party exposure, no IP leakage.
Here's the pitch: “We'll have better knowledge of what Content we have and we’ll be able to use that knowledge minimize our data footprint, eliminate anything that doesn’t meet the threshold, and demonstrate control over high business value Content."
- Priority 2: Hardware and Hosting: Questions about where AI software runs and how much infrastructure is needed will always come up. The good news? We have great guidance on minimizing footprint.
Here's the pitch: "We’ll maintain the minimum data footprint with maximum value.”
- Priority 3: Operationalization: This is where the payoff happens. How do users find information faster? How does productivity improve?
Here's the pitch: "This isn’t just AI for AI’s sake. It’s about enabling our teams to ask better questions of our data (and get better answers). Just like when they TOLD THE IT TEAM WE NEED SMARTPHONES, business users now reasonably expect "ChatGPT" behind the firewall leveraging their Content.
The Final Takeaway
Too often, the AI conversation starts with “We want to use AI to search/tag our data.”
But without first addressing the things your stakeholders care about most, like security, infrastructure, and positioning, that story won’t land.
If we align with what matters most to leadership and work backward, AI in records management can happen.
A Quick Homework Assignment
The best way to start is on a small scale. Check out Open Web UI.
This is a free tool that runs on your computer, where you can upload a document and then ask questions of it.
It's a perfect small-scale model of what could be, so you can show your stakeholders the power of AI that you control.
Talk to us when you are ready to go bigger.