Brigham Young University modernizes records management approach with SharePoint and Gimmal

Summary

A private research university in Provo, Utah, Brigham Young University is owned and operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and has the largest on-campus student population of any religious university in the United States. Howard Loos, Records and Information Manager at BYU, was looking for a better way to manage the university’s daily and historical records. With a modernized records management program and better tools for information management implemented by Gimmal, BYU improved records management compliance across the organization.

Challenge

BYU had accumulated millions of records that weren’t able to be practically or effectively managed. An inefficient “paper-based” approach to managing records required manual classification by users. This resulted in high costs related to finding, managing, and storing growing quantities of unmanaged records. Working with the university’s leadership, Loos and his team quickly decided that they needed a third-party software solution to manage the retention and transfer of SharePoint records.

Strategy

Loos’ team investigated other third-party options, and selected Gimmal Records Management because it met their needs and was the easiest system for his small team to administer with little help from IT.

BYU had a well-defined need and a desire for flexibility that would amplify the existing capability of SharePoint. Loos stated, “We needed a tool that could develop a file plan and then map the file plan with the rules to various sites.” Additionally, he identified the critical things they needed from a solution: the ability to transfer historical records to the digital preservation system, manage records in-place, and streamline the approval process for destroying records. So he turned to Gimmal, who provided the perfect software solution for his needs.

Gimmal Records Management provides a solution that is easy for a small team to administer across all their SharePoint sites. Gimmal’s solution was quickly implemented to govern SharePoint content and manage retention with automated rules.

Results

With Gimmal Records Management, SharePoint is a modern records management system. Deployment was a simple process, as BYU already implemented SharePoint into 62 of their 400 departments in 2016. BYU can centrally control their policies for all sites and locations from one location, manage records in-place, avoid the cost of moving records to another system, streamline approval for records destruction, enforce legal holds, and transfer historical records to their digital preservation system.

BYU will continue to roll out the solution to their remaining departments and benefit from a more advanced, yet practical records management system. They are especially happy with the ability to apply legal holds, defensibly dispose records, and mitigate the risks and costs of retaining outdated information. Loos stated, “The software is so flexible that as records management evolves into information governance, the tool is adaptable enough to handle it.”