Step Two - analysis of business activity
You are strongly advised to conduct a full analysis of business activity if you are in state three of the three states defined in stage two (link to start of stage 2) of this toolkit and have not carried out a separate records management project.
You are referred to the DIRKS Manual, Step B - Analysis of business activity - for a detailed account of how to conduct a preliminary investigation.
The five key steps that comprise an analysis of business activity are:
Collect information from documentary sources and interviews
Analyse the work performed by the education organisation
Identify and document each business function, activity and transaction
Develop a business classification scheme based on a hierarchy of business functions, activities and transactions
Validate the analysis of the organisation's business activity with senior management
This is a resource intensive activity so it emphasises the importance of agreeing in your project plan in stage two the scope of the project and the approach you are going to take to information gathering. If you are looking to develop a comprehensive business classification scheme then you need to review as much of the education organisation as possible. However if you are planning a phased implementation of an EDRM system you can phase the information gathering stage as well.
If you are looking for a radical implementation of an EDRM or Enterprise Content Management solution that includes significant business process re-engineering then in addition to the activities detailed in the DIRKS manual step B you also need to model your core business processes in detail and review the impact which EDRM and business process management could have on how they are conducted and redesign them to take advantage of the new technology and better meet business objectives.
Processes within schools or faculties or administration departments can be re-engineered as part of the initial roll out. Business processes that operate across the whole education organisation can normally not be re-engineered until a later phase of the project when EDRM facilities have been rolled out to all the participants. This needs to be taken account of when drawing up the implementation plan for an EDRM solution (see stage four). Several sources of best practice for process modelling and the successful implementation of workflow management are listed in Additional References and case studies section.
At the end of the analysis of business activity you should have gained:
An understanding of the relationship between your education organisation's business and the records that are a by-product and evidence of its activities
A foundation for developing tools to establish corporate control over record keeping including thesaurus development, preparation of disposal schedules, identification and specification of record keeping requirements and the formal assignment of record keeping responsibilities
An understanding of the scope for business process improvement and automation resulting from the implementation of an EDRM solution incorporating business process management software if that is within the scope of the project
This information should be clearly documented in the following:
A function source document detailing your organisation's functions, activities and transactions with associated process maps/models
A business classification scheme that shows the organisation's functions, activities and transactions in a hierarchical relationship. This is needed to link records to their business context.
The classification scheme is used together with the record keeping requirements that are defined in step three below to develop two additional important records management tools which are defined in the DIRKS manual as being:
A thesaurus of terms or records classification scheme to control the language for titling and indexing records in a specific business context.
A disposal authority/schedule that defines the retention periods and consequent disposal actions for various classes of records.
The DIRKS manual stresses that to conduct this vital step you need personnel with analytical skills, modelling techniques, oral and written communication skills and a broad knowledge of the education organisation . You can use internal resources if they exist or consultants or ideally a mix of both as consultants will lack the knowledge of your education organisation . Step two can and usually should be carried out concurrently with step three as the same sources are used. The DIRKS manual provides a simple template that can be used to record your findings for steps two and three. You can easily adapt it to suit your specific requirements.
The DIRKS manual makes the point that as a core part of your analysis you need to identify your education organisation's
Goals and the strategies developed to achieve those goals
Functions undertaken to support the goals and strategies
Activities that fulfil the core functions
Groups of transactions or processes that make up each of these activities
The DIRKS manual also makes the important point that you should not commence this labour intensive activity without significant consultation within your education organisation . It is highly likely that at least some of the core functions and activities of your education organisation will have been modelled already for other purposes. Examples of projects which result in some level of analysis of business activity in the education community will include:
Business process reengineering
Work flow automation
Development of records classification tool
Activity based costing
Quality accreditation
Systems implementation.
The most likely areas to have been analysed would include central administration activities including finance; human resources; student administration etc
JISC has funded a number of relevant projects here which can provide you with excellent models of business activities.
The best example is the Business Classification Scheme and Records Retention Schedule produced by Emmerson Consulting for JISC infoNet in 2007.
