By Bill Ludkiewicz, CRM - Immediate Past President

It was a study in contrasts.  On January 12, 2010 over 40 members and friends attended an all-afternoon affair at DIAGEO's gleaming North American corporate training facility in Norwalk, CT.   We listened to five members present real-life records management issues and solutions they are experiencing at their companies.   All presenters had a blank canvass and did a wonderful job of keeping audience interest levels high.  Whoever said records management is a dull topic?

Melissa Dederer, CRM from Purdue Pharma started the program with an intricate process description of how to conduct a data mapping project.  Often records managers and IT specialists are confronted with migrating structured databases and related systems.  Data mapping is a precise process used to translate information from one location (the source) to another (the target).

Jim Merrifield, Records Manager at Finn Dixon & Herling LLP was our "small company case study" representative for the event.  FD & H is a small law firm (42 attorneys) located in Stamford.  In Jim's five year tenure with the firm he managed many positive changes in their RIM program.  He covered the before and after, as well as the challenges, business drivers and lessons learned along the way.

Holly Mazzeo and Matt Fisher, hosts and presenters from DIAGEO, started the post break session.  Holly manages a team of employees that maintains employee records across the Americas.  The centralization of these records is a new process in the throws of implementation. (Holly will return your calls but please be patient!).  Part of the centralization involves a software rollout and training.  Matt Fisher is involved in records management compliance, including retention schedule development and implementation.  His presentation covered how DIAGEO is managing records related to employees that leave the company.  They call this the "leavers" process.

Shari Perlstein, Senior Manager in Worldwide Technology, Quality & Compliance at Pfizer, Inc. was a worthy anchor for the last session of the day.  Pfizer was certainly the BIG BIG company representative for the day.  In business over 150 years, Pfizer is the largest research pharmaceutical company in the world.  Shari estimates that Pfizer's worldwide information hoard is more than 5 petabytes, or 100 million file drawers!  Becoming even larger by the recent acquisition of Wyeth, Shari explained how their changing enterprise presents even more complexity to a very substantial RIM challenge.  Shari has teamed with Pfizer IT and other subject matter experts to develop an overall game plan to manage records and information.    Shari gave us an overview of their methodologies and progress to date.  They have a ways to go before they sleep...just like many of us. 

Thanks to all presenters in our panel.  The extra effort and quality put into each presentation was well received and much appreciated.  Any members interested participating in next year's panel, please contact any board member. --BL

                             February Speaker Background                      

Galina Datskovsky, Ph.D., CRM

Distinguished Engineer and Senior Vice President of Architecture

CA, Inc. 

Dr. Galina Datskovsky is a Distinguished Engineer and Senior Vice President of Architecture reporting to CA's Chief Technology Officer and is responsible corporate wide architecture and design initiatives. She joined CA in 2006 with the acquisition of MDY Group International, where she served as founder and CEO. Galina is a Certified Records Manager (CRM) and is recognized around the world as an expert in records management and associated technologies, including the convergence of records and document management, email and physical records management, and federated records management. She has been widely published in academic journals and speaks frequently for industry organizations such as AIIM-The Enterprise Content Management Association, Association of Legal Administrators, Gilbane Conferences, The Association for Work Process Improvement, LawNet/ILTA and Cohasset Associates/MER. Datskovsky also serves on the board of ARMA International, a not-for-profit Information Management education organization. Prior to founding MDY, Galina consulted for IBM and Bell Labs and taught at the Fordham University Graduate School of Business and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University. She received her CRM certification in 2004 and earned doctoral and master's degrees in Computer Science from Columbia University.