Organization and Control for 30 Years of Electronic Documents

Case Study

Revitalizing a department’s information management

Products Used:

Challenge

Seeking to streamline their work processes, including easy, on-demand search and retrieval of information, the team set out to create and populate a robust and suitably-featured document organization system that took advantage of rich metadata, organized file access, and sophisticated tools for presentation and search.

Solution

Taking full advantage of Valora’s PowerHouse and BlackCat software platforms, the client soon had more than a dozen fields of rich metadata for each document, with highly relevant tags such as Information Custodian, Primary Location State, Brand Names, and Government Agencies

Valora implemented a complex file disposition Ruleset to AutoClassify each file into its proper folder location inside the more than 400-node folder taxonomy. PowerHouse then created an appropriate and suitable file name for each file “promoted” to the new repository.  Finally, all files were presented up to users in BlackCat, a rich, multi-faceted data visualization interface that yielded sophisticated multi-parameter drill-downs and cross-correlated reporting.

Results

Approximately 20% of client files were removed as ROT (Redundant, Obsolete and Trivial data) 60% of the files promoted to the System of Record, and the remaining 20% of files moved to another file storage area. 

Ultimately, close to a TB of departmental data was automatically tagged, classified, migrated and presented, with a full and robust System of Record for ongoing use for all existing and future content created.

Today, the client utilizes the PowerHouse rules to classify files for several other departments.  Per one of the group’s Research Coordinators, “Finding content and managing department requests has gone from being a nightmare to a breeze.”