Managing Records Means Managing Assets, Risks and Cost

Data is an asset -- and a risk, which is why companies are starting to pay more attention.

Employees are producing records at a record pace in the form of emails, instant message chats, spreadsheets, documents and reports. Those records are posing a challenge for companies as they run out of disk storage and are forced to decide what to save, what to toss, where to store and how to create a formal policy that manages records while meeting compliance standards.

To do that, record management is becoming a group effort among the legal, compliance, IT and records management offices.

"What we're seeing is a much more methodical and interdisciplinary approach because, frankly, this stuff is getting way too hard for one department to handle or for one department to dictate what another one is supposed to do," says Christine Taylor, an analyst at The Taneja Group, an analyst and consulting firm for the technology storage industry. "There's just too much, too many implications, too many questions, too much uncertainty."

The difficulty with records management is that records aren't being produced exclusively by one department like HR applications are for HR, says Sue Trombley, director of consulting at Iron Mountain, a vendor in information protection and storage. "Everybody is creating records to some degree and in all sorts of media -- paper, electronic -- stored all over the place. That's what makes it such a challenge because it's everywhere."

Since records will continue to be produced, managing them will continue to be important. Since 90 percent of business records are shared electronically, companies must be proactive.

IT can't go down one path, compliance another, records management another and legal yet another, Trombley says. There needs to be collaboration through a governance board, advisory body or steering committee so all aspects of the problem are addressed jointly.

"There has to be a plan, there has to be a strategy or roadmap with all of those people involved in order to determine where resources need to be deployed, where there's the highest risk, where's there the highest risk to brand exposure or where are we potentially going to be sanctioned or fined because we're not in compliance with the regulatory body," Trombley says. "All of those pieces have to come together."

To Continue Reading: Click Here

---------------------------------------------------

Source: Business Finance

By: Nicole Stempak