Making the business case for Doing Information Right™ is often one of the biggest challenges we face, in no small part because so many of the improvements we can achieve are “soft” ones that our senior managers can readily push back on:
- Improving findability
- Boosting compliance
- Supporting self-service
- Reducing legal risk
Now, we know these are completely on point, but they can be difficult to quantify in terms of hard-dollar savings and generally require some extra fiscal gymnastics to make the point.
In discussing this recently, I was reminded that there are instantly quantifiable ways to justify your information governance program, at least in part.
The example that bubbled up that day involved cyber insurance, something organizations increasingly are looking into thanks to their growing concerns about being breached. It turns out that you may be able to save a significant amount of money on this if you can show you have solid practices in place to protect your information, especially of the private and sensitive sort.
Who knew?!
Well, I knew, and you probably did too. But in the crush of daily events, it’s the kind of thing that can be easily overlooked – especially by those whose who’ve been asked to look into cyber coverage and likely haven’t even heard of information governance, never mind its potential to actually reduce premiums.
It’s therefore up to us to seek out tangible, readily-understood, administrative and operating costs that our sound information disciplines can reduce. Our arguments that we’ll get “better” and “faster” are all well and good, but you can’t beat adding “calculably cheaper” if you really want your business case to capture your senior team’s attention.
I’d love to hear from you about the areas that come to mind in your organization. So please leave a comment or shoot me email and let me know!