The importance of content services for information governance

Information governance is an important business framework that defines a set of requirements and procedures to regulate the creation, use, sharing and storage of information in your company. It’s an all-encompassing approach that helps everyone in your organisation to uphold the policies, standards, processes and individual roles that steer agile, effective and secure information management. 

Not only does information governance preserve and protect your data, but it also helps you achieve your business goals by breaking down silos and disconnected data systems to streamline the way your organisation manages its assets.

In this blog, we uncover the benefits of information governance and how content services can play a pivotal role in providing added security and efficiency capabilities to your framework.

What are the benefits of information governance?

Information governance is now considered essential for any business. This is because the appropriate framework enables your organisation to strategically and responsibly manage your business data and maintain its integrity throughout the information lifecycle. Information governance offers an extensive range of benefits, including: 

• Actionable data insights: With good data comes good insights. An information governance framework helps to continually support your business priorities by providing accurate, accessible and timely access to relevant information. This can help your business leaders to make informed decisions that lead to more meaningful outcomes for your organisation.
• Increased productivity and collaboration: An information governance framework supported by intuitive technologies can minimise disruptive workflows, improve communication across teams and departments, and allow faster, easier access to the information your staff needs. With more effective information sharing, you’ll enhance productivity, facilitate more impactful collaboration and eliminate siloed ways of working.
• Ensure regulatory compliance with industry standards: An information governance framework can ensure that your business’s internal procedures stack up against industry compliance standards. In an increasingly complex business landscape with ever-changing regulations and requirements, this is crucial to avoid the threat of penalties, financial loss, prosecution and tarnished reputation as a result of noncompliance.
• A robust security posture: With cybersecurity threats an increasingly prominent risk to modern businesses, the need for stronger security is greater than ever before. A suitable information governance framework can drastically minimise the threat of data breaches by defining the necessary protocols for a business-wide approach to upholding document security.

How can content services support information governance?

Content services are key to accelerating, protecting and streamlining the environment in which information assets are managed in your organisation. They empower your team to securely and efficiently create, share, use and manage documents and records in line with your information governance framework and overall business objectives. This helps preserve the value of the data being stored, satisfy industry compliance standards, and provide a practical solution for all staff and stakeholders who need to interact with business information on a regular basis.

Here are three significant ways that content services can support information governance in your organisation: 

1. Security and access management

Giving your people easy, mobile access to information is as critical as the need to maintain a high level of security. But how do you do both? Content services enable you to eliminate unsecured paper trails and the associated risks of misplacing or losing printed files by digitising your document environment. With secure technology, such as end-to-end data encryption, you can remove the risk of your documents ending up in the wrong hands by having controls and permissions in place that ensure documents are only accessed by particular teams or individuals. This enables your staff to work productively and flexibly in a controlled digital environment.

2. Advanced data capture and indexing

Innovative document management technologies can uphold information governance in your organisation by aligning and improving how information is captured and stored. Content services’ advanced data capture and indexing features can efficiently recognise, classify, auto-tag and capture information through artificial intelligence. This makes it easier to find stored data later, while also saving valuable time and resources, and eliminating human error from the entire data management process.

3. Digital data archiving

While information governance planning is often primarily focused on the security and classification of data, sometimes the long-term retention of information is overlooked. That’s where content services work wonders once again with digital archiving. This allows you to safely store dormant data, minimise record management risks, and maintain compliance and legal standards, even as requirements change. In the event that a contract, email, sales order, invoice or any other document needs to be checked in the future, smart search features enable you to locate it by entering a keyword or phrase, giving you access within seconds. This enables your organisation to cohesively safe keep information, sustain data integrity and carry out the efficient, secure and compliant retrieval or destruction of business information when necessary.

Are you ready to start improving your business workflows? Document management software is the place to start. Download our buyer's guide to learn the key features you need to look for to choose the best Document Management System for your business.