the time spent searching for missing or
miss-filed records is non-productive and
costly. eLawForum estimates the total cost
of litigation preparation to be $210 billion,
equivalent to one-third of the after-tax
profit of the Fortune 500, dwarfing CEO
compensation.
According to legal counsel of a large
financial company, they spend more than
200 million dollars in information harvesting fees to support record and information
discovery.
A good records management program,
on the other hand, will help an organization upgrade its recordkeeping systems
so that information retrieval is enhanced,
with corresponding improvements in
office efficiency and productivity.
Assuming the policy is already in place,
the first step is to appoint a committee or
individual to drive the initiative corporate-wide. This task usually falls to the corporate legal department because it’s one
of the few functional areas that interacts
regularly with virtually every part of the
company, from the CEO, board of directors through the corporate organizational
chart.
Meet with each of the company’s key
stakeholders responsible for maintaining
and updating the company’s vital records
for its operations, employee data, corporate structure, and governance (i.e. human
resources, facilities, finance, administration, operations and legal, including the
corporate secretary).
Then meet with individual departments.
Every department will need to identify
and list what mission-critical information – data or records it needs to be able
to operate on a day-to-day basis – it has on
hand (onsite), along with the data it has in
storage (offsite). Some common examples
include:
u single-page documents in highly active files
(customer contracts or medical files)
u internal records (personnel information)
u regulated files (legal documentation)
u archived files and/or cartons
u proprietary assets such as patented
materials
u digital records (most media types/formats)
u film and sound materials
u architectural drawings and blueprints
u product samples and/or prototypes
u historical artifacts
Identify the records by format (
electronic or hard copy), where the information is kept (on or off site), how long
the information must be kept to comply
with local, state, federal, and sometimes
foreign laws, and when it can be legally
discarded.
The goal is to have each stakeholder
map their department’s data life cycle,
from creation to disposition and every step
in between.
Mapping what you have and determining what you need to retain (and for how
long according to an operational or retention schedule) allows you to develop a
customized document/information retention plan that reflects your company’s data
management needs.
I say “customized” because there is
no one-size-fits-all process. Every stake-holder/department head will have to outline what constitutes a critical business
record and what retention rules must be
applied to it.
Improved Access
Once the records are identified and
mapped, you are ready to either develop
or execute an already-existing retention
plan and guidelines. The goal is to know
where all your records are and to be able
to quickly access them if and when you
need to – regardless of record type. That,
in turn, will allow you to implement a
detailed retention policy, with a strict
retention schedule applied to each record
type of information, and train your staff on
how to execute it.
Keep in mind that 30 to 60 percent
of the information companies keep is
retained beyond its operational, regulatory,
or legal life. With most corporate budgets
already stretched to the limit, eliminating anywhere from one- to two-thirds of
your hardcopy and/or electronic files will
do wonders for your records information
management budget.
Start by classifying the information by
department. Have the stakeholders
standardize each record type. For example, does Sally in accounts payable label
each document in a certain category with
“AP,” followed by the file name, while her
associate, Frank, uses “ACCT-PAY,” followed by the file name?
Will it be easy to a find a specific file
several years down the road if Sally and/or
Frank have left the company? Make each
record classification or category consistent
throughout the department.
Enforcement Processes
At this point you should have what
amounts to an enterprise-wide strategic
road map that shows what information is
being retained, the record type categories
for each stakeholder, whether it’s being
kept on site or off site, the media type
(hard copy, electronic, tape, server, or on
or off site) and how long each document
needs to be retained [regulatory (local,
state, or federal) or operational].
The next step is to train your employees on how to comply with the policy. In
addition to knowing how to identify and
categorize their day-to-day information,
employees also need to understand why
RIM process is so important and why its
measures must be enforced.
Consider the following example: A
large financial services company currently retains 100,000 cartons of records
in secure storage facilities. Of that total,
roughly 20,000 cartons were delivered
following a major reorganization. In their
haste, employees bypassed the firm’s RIM
procedures and simply boxed and shipped
the 20,000 cartons to off-site storage without identifying the contents. With no idea
of what type of information these records
contain, the company will likely have to
