Now that big data is old news, the discourse on data has moved to content chaos. Whether they know or not, most, if not all organizations that have it are subject to an overwhelming amount of data. Regardless of size, industry, or location, every organization has content that needs to be managed and legally retained.

According to Beth Mayhew from AIIM.org, organizations have, for many years, neglected their information assets—particularly those that live electronically in email, documents, and other media. The resulting content chaos can inhibit growth and increase risk. Today, the sheer volume and variety of information that fuels critical business processes demands attention and care.

There are four categories of content chaos:

• The chaos of computers: the automation of back end processes
• The chaos of collaboration: creating centralized systems that remove duplication and encourage efficiencies throughout departments and organizations
• The chaos of communication: managing social media, texts, voicemails, and other consumer communications
• The chaos of compliance: meeting legal compliance with legal holds, e-discovery and regulatory statutes

The chaos of computers:

Scalability means that resources within the system, both IT and organization-wide, are allocated properly. Real scale produces increased performance in a manner proportional to resources added. Increasing performance in general means speed and efficiency, but it can also mean the ability to handle bigger data sets and bigger clients. Are you ready for your next major customer?

The chaos of collaboration:

Enterprise content management has long been a key component of an overall strategic approach to taking technology assets to the next level. Smart CTOs are finding a way to employ a centralized, spoke-and-hub configuration to manage both structured and unstructured data. Knowledge workers spend approximately 10-40 percent of their time looking for specific data. For companies that currently operate in a siloed environment, those gains can be huge.

 The chaos of communication:

For those in retail, manufacturing, or operating in the B2C space, their servers are full of product data, descriptions, prices, images, specifications, and inventory. Adding to the challenge of standardizing the date are the complexities of platforms that are mobile compliant.

Add in multiple channels like email, mobile push notification, Twitter, Facebook, and blogs and you start to see the complexity of the issue. As marketing finds innovative ways to increase the number of consumer touch points beyond e-commerce, e-mail, mobile applications, and in-store kiosks, the scope only grows in size. Marketing must work with IT to manage data at the enterprise level and optimize data.

The chaos of compliance:

General Counsels and risk managers are facing the complexities of an environment laden with potential pitfalls. Between e-Discovery and legal holds lies a plethora of state and federal guidelines that need to be met. Without a strategic plan in place, keeping documents indefinitely is not only risky, it’s expensive too. You will find that keeping content too long is just as risky as destroying it too soon. It is important to know the law and have a set of approved retention schedules to provide a guide in the proper retention and destruction of content.

With a well-defined evaluation of where chaos exists, you will be on your way to finding solutions that will bring your organization increased efficiencies and future success.