Report: Executives and IT departments face ‘trust gap’

Whenever a business is transitioning from one way of completing tasks to another, it may require effort from multiple departments. Access has to be granted by the executives, information technology experts must install the program and all staffers have to be adequately trained.

Why are all these steps necessary when a company implements an electronic document management system? Because not doing so may heavily impact the program's potential of improving efficiency and reducing cost. A report from IBM found that time and again, a "trust gap" among different parties has created obstacles toward these efforts.

IBM presented such an issue at a financial institution, where multiple offices asked IT to create an electronic database for clients, but wanted it to be exclusive to the department.

In turn, "they'd be doing the same work the way they wanted to have it done," Kathy Reece, one of the authors of IBM's report, told InformationWeek. Reece added that businesses that completed operations this way were "actually doubling the cost of their analytics workload, as well as duplicating efforts."

When less than 40 percent of business leaders feel that there is a "strong level of trust" between other executives, it can be difficult for IT officers to effectively implement document management programs.

"[I]f you have information about a customer, and you want to hold it tight to your chest and not share it with the other lines of business, it's really hard for them to get a 360-degree view of the customer," Reece explained.

One of the most visible examples of this issue occurred with Healthcare.gov. A lack of interdependence prior to the launch of Healthcare.gov made it difficult for the Department of Health and Human Services to build a portal that could handle the influx of Americans applying for human insurance exchanges.

Now, this $195 million platform may cost taxpayers more dollars to repair the glitches—further delaying the launch of universal health care for citizens in 2014.

Companies that want to take a step toward a paperless office, but are unsure how to go about it may want to reach out to a document management provider like OptiDoc. We will help implement and maintain a private cloud system for organizations that may not have the knowledge in doing so.

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