Staying on top of trends, techniques leads to business success.

How's business?

In today's global business environment, that seemingly innocuous phrase can elicit panic, pride, or a litany of complaints. For RIM professionals, an accurate answer is "Business is on the move!" Standards, new legislation and other compliance issues, and new technology mean there is no longer a status quo. You either adapt and grow, or you risk getting left behind.

RIM professionals who make an effort to keep up-to-date on trends, technology, and techniques bring added value to their organizations and gain visibility for themselves and their profession--both internally and in the business community--as they help their organizations be more successful. There are multiple resources readily available to help RIM managers educate and enlighten themselves. Books, journals, online newsletters and websites, web seminars, conferences, and, even more simply, the evening news, can all help provide information that the RIM professional needs to adapt and grow to greater success in the ever-changing business world.

This issue of The Information Management Journal is about "The Business of RIM" and will stimulate your professional growth with articles that will help keep you on the leading edge of business developments. Its articles will help you respond to the challenges that accompany expanding international business opportunities, evolving communications technologies, and increasing demands for information contained in databases.

David Stephens' article, "The Why and How of International Records Retention," provides the RIM professional with a practical approach to researching the retention requirements of other countries and formulating retention policies for a multinational corporation. He writes, "Unless the overseas units have well-developed and aggressively implemented records retention programs, they cannot control the growth of their records, ensure compliance with records retention laws and regulations, or reduce the legal liabilities that can sometimes be associated with document retention and disposal."

"Blogs: The New Information Revolution?" by Bruce Dearstyne, Ph.D., provides an overview of the web log (blog) phenomenon and discusses the opportunities and challenges its growing use presents in the business environment. This article will help RIM professionals put themselves in the driver's seat in the race to put into place policies and procedures that will ensure that blog records are managed appropriately.

Joseph Firestone, Ph.D., provides an introduction to the complex, but fascinating, world of data mining in his article, "Mining for Information Gold" RIM professionals can aid their businesses by using data mining to reveal nuggets of information that can help their companies increase profits, find new avenues of revenue, or arrive at solutions for a perplexing problem.

So, how's business? With dedicated RIM professionals staying abreast of trends, legislation, and technology, business is and will continue to be great!