An M365 steering committee meeting, which I was invited to by the chief executive officer (CEO), started off with:

• an operational executive telling information technology (IT) that they could not find documents they needed in Shared Drives, One Drive, Teams, and SharePoint. They said the document management situation was a hot mess,
• legal saying that during e-discovery lawsuit, older records had been discovered in Teams and SharePoint that should have been disposed of in accordance with their schedules and they were concerned that this will impact the organization in court,
• the records manager politely responding to legal that electronic records stored in Teams and SharePoint were outside of their responsibility,
• the CFO saying the organization needs to reduce costs, and
• IT asking for more funds to upgrade the M365 license.

As the chief financial officer (CFO) called for a five-minute break in the action, I readied myself to jump in.

“What is wrong with M365 is not M365,” I told the battling executives. I then asked the following questions:

• Had the organization developed a five-year enterprise electronic content management (ECM) budget (all costs), plan, and roadmap?
• Did IT help the user groups develop application design(s), including indexes, search requirements, integration to data systems, workflow, and retention/disposition design prior to implementing SharePoint?
• Who owns electronic documents, and determines what stays in Shared Drives, One Drive, Teams, and SharePoint, and what can be disposed of using Purview?
• Had the organization’s LEAN and Six Sigma experts been asked to be included in the design of M365 workflow pattern structure, routing, and measurements?
• Did the organization assess its records information management (RIM) and governance status for both electronic and physical records?
• Were information governance/records management schedules, policies, and procedures updated before SharePoint deployment?
• Was an electronic records management (ERM) electronic records module (Purview) deployed and adequately set up to interact with Shared Drives, One Drive, Teams, and SharePoint?

I received the following answers:

• An enterprise-wide plan had not been established. IT felt they that unstructured content was outside of its responsibility.
• There were no agreed-upon folding and document naming conventions for documents stored in Shared Drives and One Drive.
• There was no standard method to develop SharePoint ECM applications across the organization. Individual and group users were given training and permission to deploy SharePoint how they saw fit. Most of them just copied what was in their Shared Drives (see hot mess, above).
• “The user groups own the electronic documents,” said the records manager. “I gave them a records schedule, and it’s their responsibility to follow it.”
• “What is workflow technology?” the operational executive asked.
• “We already did LEAN for our processes,” said the users, “to get rid of steps we thought were waste.” The records manager said, “Yes, they got rid of all of the records management quality control steps they thought were a waste of time.”
• “We have been thinking of developing an information governance program,” said the legal department.
• “We looked at the Purview records management module,” said IT, “but the users thought it took too much time to set up and they want to keep the documents forever. Anyway, we back up everything so nothing will be lost.” At that point, the general counsel reached for her headache medicine.

“So, what’s your advice?” asked the CEO. I responded:

• A five-year, enterprise-wide ECM plan needs to be developed. The plan must identify all costs, including planning, software, setup, integration, internal support, training, and external/internal maintenance costs, and identify an organizational roadmap based on individual and overall project cost/benefit.
• From this roadmap, SharePoint needs to be assessed as to where it fits “today,” not tomorrow. Where SharePoint is not fit, other capture, ECM, workflow or ERM software needs to be included in the plan.
• A standard method to assess ECM application requirements needs to be developed and followed, including documentation of project-specific capture, recognition, indexing, annotation, e-signature/authorization, storage, view, workflow, email integration, data system integration, website integration, retention/disposition, and output requirements.
• The design needs to be a strong user narrative of business requirements. Once developed, IT and the records manager should help the user groups evaluate SharePoint for fit, cost, time to develop and risk. Where SharePoint is a fit, IT needs to help user groups set up SharePoint to meet application requirements. Where it is not, IT needs to help the user groups identify, set up or integrate other 3rd party products to fulfill user requirements.
• Processes related to ECM need to be inventoried and assessed as to the potential benefit of structured workflow patterns. If structured workflow looks to be advantageous, process maps need to be developed; processes need to be cleaned up/improved (i.e., efficiency, quality, service) using LEAN, Six Sigma, business process management (BPM), or re-engineering techniques.
• A proper workflow pattern needs to be documented at the right level of automation and measurement. The maps should be used to determine Power Automate fit, type of automation proposed (e.g., point-and-click design vs. scripting) and risk. Where there is not a fit, IT needs to help the user groups identify, set up or integrate other 3rd party products to fulfill user requirements.
• An information governance (IG) plan needs to be developed and communicated, including record management policies, procedures, program, and retention/disposition rules. IG rules need to be re-enforced through an ERM electronic records management module. The IG rules should also be developed and rolled out to support documents stored in shared network drives, email, paper, and other areas.

One of the executives responded, “This sounds like a lot of work. Do we have to do this?”

“It all depends how comfortable you are with your current situation,” I said.

Want to find out how to plan or straighten out your organization’s M365 deployment? We at CRE8 Independent Consultants have extensive experience with planning for M365 and 3rd party ECM, workflow, and retention/disposition software. We are also process improvement experts (LEAN, Six Sigma, BPM, Re-engineering). Feel free to reach out to us to discuss your situation and how we can help. Best George Dunn, President CRE8 Independent Consultants.