It has always been the challenge for Records Managers to create records policies that have the right balance. Too few record types leads to a loose model with a high risk of information not being classified correctly and not being found in the future or worse still getting destroyed before it should be. On the other end of the scale, records policies that are too complicated, with too many record types defined become complicated for the end user but also a nightmare to maintain.
The trick is getting the balance between too few and too many records types. I appreciate there is more to it than that but one approach that works in some circumstances within various ECM systems is not too go overboard on the Document Types/Classes. Too many Document Classes can lead to a headache when administering so apply the big bucket approach.
Eg, Banking
| Typical Approach | Simplified |
Document Classes:
|
Documents Classes:
Document Categories: (ChoiceList)
|
As I mentioned this doesn’t suit all use cases but hopefully the concept gives some ideas for those challenging Records Management, Document Classification, Records Policies and Categorization projects. The big time saver in this approach is only having to maintain a Choice List/Field Lookup rather than creating separate docclasses for each document type but you also need to pay attention to your fields/properties as they need to be set at the document class level and be applicable to all your categories.
When migrating clients from shared drives to ECM/DMS systems it is always easy to apply the above approach but more challenging if they already have a electronic repository. Generally, those with existing repositories that have grown over time you can find lots of opportunity to standardize their records policy although this is difficult to do in an existing system. Hopefully, they have a migration on the cards in the future 
