This is a guest blog by SeeUnity CEO, Dan Anderson.
Over the years, organizations have complicated the use of different applications within businesses. They have either stacked applications on top of one another to create all-in-one solutions, or they have ignored the fact that their employees are in need of additional applications to make their jobs easier. Particularly, we have seen this a lot with file sharing. File sharing should be an easy process for your employees. The market has evolved from sharing/editing documents in person and on paper to sending documents via email, to now, the use of applications to collaborate. Along the lines, what was meant to be a way to make things easier, complicated collaboration processes.
What your users want is a way to get their most simple processes done, without the complication of navigating through various team sites, repositories, etc. Things, like completing a document and getting a sign off on it, is an easy way to frame what I mean. A good example of this are NDAs. Organizations want to send someone a basic document, have it completed by the person who is signing it, and to get it back, pain-free. That way there are less opportunities for error. Unfortunately, when organizations complicate the process by requiring it to be held in their collaboration or DMS system, employees are likely to find a work around. It is no wonder that the use of personal file shares have become a popular problem within organizations.
We have seen that people are going back to basics when it comes to file sharing. It is easy for an employee to send themselves a work document, or use their personal file share to get things done much quicker. Especially when the end goal is to simply get a signature on a document, or maybe have the document proofed. Does it matter to your organization that this is happening? If so what are you going to do about it?
Get back to basics
There are options that will allow you to get back to basics. Not entirely in the sense that you will allow users to freely send content over email, or upload things to their personal file shares, but in the sense that there are easy and secure ways to share files. First, you will want to weigh standardizing your processes. Are there rules that your users need to follow? Will these rules be upheld by the honor system or are there going to be administrative protections on the back end in place? One reason we’ve seen companies implement backend rules is to prevent employees leaving and taking with them confidential content held in their personal file sharing systems.
Control of your content is an important aspect of your organization. The security of the company, as well as the reputation of the organization are two things you don’t want to sacrifice as a result of giving your employees free will to interact with content irresponsibly. If you go back to basics, you don’t have to sacrifice these things. There are advantages to having secure file sharing. It gives your users easier ways to interact with their content.
