Tom Fox’s guest on this episode of the Innovation in Compliance podcast is Erica Toelle. Erica is the Senior Product Marketing Manager for Records Management and InfoGov at Microsoft. As a long-time member of the Microsoft community, she has been dedicated to growing the information governance and records management business and listening to customers and partners to make solutions better. Erica joins Tom to talk about her role at Microsoft, and how the info governance and record management space will evolve in the near future.
 

 
Improving Operations
Erica loves to help companies improve their operations using technology. It’s interesting to work with an organization’s compliance experts and help to translate their requirements into Microsoft technology, she tells Tom. “The pace of change in technology has been fast the last 20 years and there are often better ways of doing things, but you have to balance doing things the best way with disrupting productivity and business through change,” she remarks. She argues that it’s better to use a solution that everyone finds easy to use but only has 80% of the desired features, than one that has 100% of the desired functionality but which no one wants to use. “As the compliance person, if you make a solution that’s too hard to use because it’s your ultimate compliance dream, people are going to use their company credit card to buy a different cloud subscription….or figure out how to share files with people outside the company,” she says.
 
Translating Microsoft Offerings To Solve Compliance Needs
The main issue Erica sees with respect to translating Microsoft offerings to solve compliance needs is that there aren’t clearly defined roles and responsibilities in the organization. “In order to really create a good offering around any of the compliance tools, you have to get the business decision-makers and the business experts together with IT, and then figure out how you want to work together and divide those roles and responsibilities,” she comments.
 
What’s Next
The records management industry needs to shift its thinking to a more electronic approach. In the coming years, we’re going to see artificial intelligence be leveraged more to deal with the volume of electronic records. 
 
Listen here to Microsoft Week episode 1, featuring Alan Gibson, Director of Legal and Compliance Innovation at Microsoft.
 
Listen here to Microsoft Week episode 2, featuring Abbas Kudrati, Chief Cybersecurity Advisor for Microsoft Asia’s Enterprise Cybersecurity Group.
 
Listen here to Microsoft Week episode 3, featuring Joseph Davis, Microsoft’s Chief Security Advisor for Health and Life Sciences.
 
Tune in tomorrow for episode 5 featuring Jesus Fernandez.
 
Resources
Erica Toelle | LinkedIn | Twitter
Microsoft 365 Compliance