What My Kitchen Reno Taught Me About Information Governance By Alyssa Blackburn

What My Kitchen Reno Taught Me About Information Governance

BY ALYSSA BLACKBURN

I’m in the middle of a kitchen renovation and have just been through the process of designing what the new workspace will look like (bench space and drawers seem to be the prevailing theme at the moment!). While I’m going through what the essential architecture of the space will be, I also have to consider where all the ‘stuff’ will go. I love to cook and can admit that the kitchen is a space where I may have too much stuff. I need to design the kitchen so that it’s functional, easy to use, and I can find what I need quickly and easily. Simple, right?

It's the same situation with collaboration platforms and information repositories (although potentially with slightly less literal dust). The workspace is equally as important as the content that goes into it, so it’s vital that we consider the two things together. Over the last decade, collaboration platforms like Microsoft 365 have rapidly changed how we work and communicate. But with this rapid change has come increasing complexity.

For example, there is a whole lot more ‘architecture’ to consider when it comes to workspaces (is it a Team, a Group, a SharePoint site, a Yammer Community?), but we can’t lose sight of user enablement and information governance considerations. These things must go hand in hand. We need good management and oversight of collaboration workspaces, but also over the content stored within them.

Over the last decade, collaboration platforms like Microsoft 365 have rapidly changed how we work and communicate. But with this rapid change has come increasing complexity.

A critical success factor for valuable information management and governance in a collaboration platform is being able to align your information architecture (where your users will work) with your information management program and policies.

This is where AvePoint’s suite of information governance tools come together to manage your entire collaboration platform (and beyond!), at both a workspace and content level.

AvePoint Cloud Governance helps control workspaces from provisioning through ongoing management, and recertification (do the right people have access?) through endof-life—all of which also help to contain sprawl. This right-sized approach to governance means that you can apply different policies and configurations depending on the business purpose, division, or risk.

AvePoint’s Cloud Records solution provides information lifecycle management for content stored in your collaboration platform or other business systems (e.g., physical records, file shares, and archival locations like Azure Blob or Azure Files, etc.).

This gives an information manager oversight and management of content from the time is it created with the ability to automatically apply appropriate lifecycle policies for retention, disposal, archival, or transfer.

You can also protect your environment from complex data loss— user error, outages, or a ransomware attack, just to name a few—with AvePoint’s Cloud Backup solution. Get back to work faster in the event of a service outage, permissions fiasco, or content corruption, all the while protecting your most valuable asset: your information.

With so many facets to information governance and management, don’t make the mistake of ignoring one only to the detriment of the others. AvePoint provides the only single platform that covers the full range of your information governance needs as part of a 100% SaaS environment.

Now, if anyone needs me, I’ll be figuring out how to fit 52 (absolutely essential and definitely not expired) spice jars in a drawer.

Visit our website at www.avepoint.com to learn more

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Alyssa Blackburn Director, Records & Information Management Strategy. Alyssa Blackburn is the Information Strategy Lead at AvePoint, where she helps organisations achieve business value from their information and records. With 20 years of experience in the information management industry, Alyssa has worked with both public and private sector organisations to deliver guidance for information management success in the digital age. She is responsible for the development of AvePoint’s information and records management solution, AvePoint Records and Cloud Records, and has been involved with implementing our records management solution with government agencies and commercial clients.