SharePoint versus EDRM

A delegate on one of my recent EDRM training courses told me that his organisation (a large financial institution) had been planning their EDRM implementation for years and were just about to start their roll-out when they received some unwelcome news.  Another part of their organisation had purchased SharePoint. 'What should I do?' he asked me.

EDRM systems and SharePoint are both competing for the same space and market (and as the above example shows, sometimes competing within the same organisation). But there are marked contrasts in the strengths, weaknesses and records management model behind the two types of system.

Strengths
The strength of EDRM is the control it gives to organisations.  They can ensure that all their teams and departments store their documents and records within one organisational classification (fileplan). 

The strengh of SharePoint is the flexibility it gives to teams and workgroups:  a team can set up a team site or a project site within which they can have:

• their own document library to store their documents and records
• a calendar
• a bulletin board
• links to, and feeds from, other sites
• news and pictures etc.

Weaknesses
The achilles heal of EDRM is user acceptance.  The fact that teams are forced to store their records in an organisationaly defined structure brings with it the risk that teams and/or individuals will reject the structure and opt to store their documents elsewhere. Some EDRM implementations have been prematurely aborted due to lack of user-take up. 

The achilles heal of SharePoint is the overall coherence (or lack of it!) of the repository. Each document library inside each team site or project site is a world on its own.  There is no place to maintain an overall classification to bring together and make sense of all the records in the system.  My colleague Miles describes a typical SharePoint implementation as 'a tangled mess of websites, with document libraries popping up all over the place'

Speed of implementation
EDRM is notoriously slow to implement:  not just the time to configure and integrate the software, but the time taken to build the organisation's fileplan, and the time taken for the phased roll out to reach all parts of the organisation. 

SharePoint is not necessarily any easier than EDRM to configure, but once you have got it up and running teams can set up project sites and get working straight away.  Another colleague (John) describes project sites 'spreading like bindweed' as team after team sets them up.

Records management model
EDRM stems from a well worked through records management model, based on the International Records Management Standard and the statements of functional requirements issued by the National Archives (TNA 2002) and the European Union (MoReq).  Retention rules and access rules are linked to fileplan headings and passed down to the folders and records saved under those headings.

SharePoint has not attempted to meet the TNA 2002 or MoReq requirements (the strength of Microsoft's position in the market means it can prosper without them).  Instead SharePoint has its own records management model.  Rules can be defined whereby documents needed as records can be copied from document libraries in team sites, and sent to another type of site, called a records centre.  Retention rules can be applied to those documents copied to the records centre. 

I am sceptical about the value of the records centre in SharePoint.  It is an afterthought, a place where no-one visits and no work is done. A records graveyard rather than a trusted, referenced and used archive. 

Conclusions
I am no fan of the records management model behind SharePoint, but I must admit that the project site is a much more lively and interesting environment to work in than either the traditional hard copy file, or the electronic record folder in an EDRM.  My hopes are that we as a profession can:

• find ways of helping our organisations to structure and make sense of these team and project sites, rather than relying on the SharePoint's unproven Records Centre concept. 
• find ways of influencing Microsoft to improve the functionality of SharePoint in ways that make the above task easier.

SharePoint Summit

On April 1, 2008 TFPL are hosting a one-day conference in London at which practioners and consultants from a variety of UK organisations and sectors will share their experiences in using SharePoint for records management and collaborative working:  to see the programme and for details of how to sign up follow this link

Comments

[Simon Carswell]

Perhaps organisations should give more thought to ditching the document model in favour of the web page model - wikis and blogs, glued together by the folksonomy that emerges from user-chosen tags? It potentially gives the best of both worlds: an organisation-wide architecture, albeit built ground-upwards, plus huge local flexibility.