Organizations are facing the reality that electronic information is, or can be, a record and as such, are now trying to address how they will manage this mounting mass. Many organizations are turning to SharePoint as a solution to address this growing challenge, and while the technology is good and may be well suited to address some of an organization's document and records management requirements, the technology alone is not enough to ensure compliance. In a recent AIIM Industry Watch study, "SharePoint-strategies and experiences," we found that:

• 37% of organizations consider SharePoint to be their first significant implementation of ECM. For smaller organizations, 52% are first-timers, but this is also the case for 25% of over 5,000 employee
  businesses. For those who already have ECM or RM systems, 41% have set SharePoint as their collaboration tool but will retain their existing system for document and records management.


• 44% of respondents have rolled out SharePoint across 10 or more geographical sites, with 14% covering over 100 geographical sites and one third-of installations spanning more than one country.


• 5% use SharePoint for collaboration between project partners, and 18% use it to interact with customers.


• One-third of respondents found their SharePoint project took longer than expected although cost overruns were reported less often. The biggest project issues were management of process change and user resistance to new interfaces


• A third of implementing organizations have no plans as to where and where not to use SharePoint, suggesting a lack of management direction.


• 26% reported that the IT department is driving the project with no input from information management professionals.


• Team site sprawl, with no policy on ownership and end-of-life, is an issue for a quarter of users.


• 58% of active users do have a policy on site ownership and responsibilities, but only 19% on end-of-life.

In addition, the research showed that "governance is sadly lacking in the majority of installations with little thought given to e-discovery, retention policies and, most of all, classification schemes and metadata standards."