Why Managing E-mail Matters

Well-managed electronic discovery can help corporations avoid a financial nightmare.

Corruption and litigation make headlines. We've read about the anti-trust allegations against Google in the U.S. and Europe. U.S. Congressional investigations into Goldman Sachs' fraudulent practices have been covered across every mainstream media outlet.

These are the tip of the iceberg.

The rate of litigation and regulatory scrutiny on corporations across every industry and geography is increasing dramatically. Many large corporations deal with hundreds of investigations, regulatory inquiries, and lawsuits that never make headlines, yet generate incredible financial strain and operational burden while simultaneously exposing executives and shareholders to great risk. Given the increasing frequency of such events--and the potential damage wreaked upon reputations and balance sheets--executives, boards of directors and audit committees are engaging in assessments of a company's ability to rapidly and accurately understand the situation in response to legal inquiries.

The challenge in doing so is navigating the sheer and growing volume of electronically stored information related to such matters. In 2009 corporate users circulated over 60 billion e-mails per day. More data leads to greater liability; each case forces corporations to collect and analyze their electronic footprint to determine who sent what, to whom, when. This process is known as electronic discovery (e-discovery).

Companies across the U.S., U.K., continental Europe and Asia are recognizing that e-discovery now entails more than simply responding to litigation. Increasingly, corporations are viewing e-discovery as a standard business process used by compliance, legal, risk, HR and other groups. Without this business process in place, e-discovery can become exceedingly complicated--even more so for multi-national corporations navigating regulatory and legislative nuances across geographical and jurisdictional borders. Furthermore, shareholder value is at risk. If we total the billions lost in shareholder value from these types of cases, it equates to a global phenomenon impacting nearly every investment fund, shareholder, and developed economy.

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Source: forbes.com
By: Andy Byrne