Very good customer example of how SharePoint and Microsoft’s ECM capability in general …
… Two years ago, oil company Chevron Corp. noticed an alarming trend: Employees were creating digital files such as emails so quickly that the amount of such data was growing at 60% a year.
The explosion of these office documents — not including the technical data that Chevron gets from its refineries — produced several ill effects. Besides the cost of buying new storage systems, Chevron’s employees were spending between 1½ to three days a month just searching for the correct information they needed to do their jobs, taking a toll on productivity, the company found.
“We haven’t adequately managed all our information,” says Lynn Chou, Chevron’s general manager of global technology and strategy, adding that the 59,000-person company processes one million emails a day. “There’s been a digital tidal wave.”
To date, the San Ramon, Calif., company estimates it has amassed 1,250 terabytes of corporate office data such as emails, word-processing documents, spreadsheets, photos and video files. (Each terabyte is equivalent to the data of one million books). So it has launched a massive effort to reduce the flood, using a combination of technology tools and changes in employee work habits. …
… Chevron’s system will require new office documents to be tagged according to their type and importance, such as noting whether the document is confidential, classified or just informational. As a result, the company expects to delete some documents of lesser importance as soon as 90 days after creation. Employees will also be encouraged to work using SharePoint, rather than simply the Microsoft Office applications that they’re used to. …
source : Wallstreet Journal
