Boiled down to its absolute barest bones, records management and storage is all about securing key information and complying with regulations. But it is so very much more.

Organizations that prioritize records management as part of their employee and community engagement projects can use their storage and management resources to better connect their workers to the company and develop more meaningful relationships with customers and members of the community. A recent example is the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) archive system.

According to a recent report published on the university’s website, the Penn archive has been functioning for decades, but has recently put a few key changes into action. These shifts are helping the university connect with researchers, the local community and students in a more meaningful way, helping to generate excitement about the institution’s accomplishments over the years and spurring growth opportunities.

This began in the 1980s, according to the report, when a new retrieval and delivery system made records more accessible and easier to search. This was followed by a major milestone in 2009, when the facility was moved from Franklin Field, the university’s football stadium, to a dedicated archive site nearby. This has allowed the staff to employ new practices that draw the university’s community into its history, prestige and future goals. For example, historian and web master Alyssa Sheldon is now using Twitter to reveal photographs and official records pertaining to the university’s past to reach out to students, faculty, staff and others interested in the academic institution.

Within businesses, these kinds of practices can generate major results. Releasing key corporate strategic goals can help employees see where their work falls into the big picture, motivating them and making them more productive. Similarly, using records to showcase the company’s history can make workers feel like they are part of something more meaningful than their day-to-day activities, motivating them to work more effectively.

What are you doing to look beyond the box and connect your records and information management program to better your community and engage employees?

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Over the past few decades, or centuries in some cases, court systems throughout the United States have maintained paper records detailing key information about trials. At first glance, keeping paperwork on site made perfect sense. During trials, judges and clerks had access to the records they needed to understand the case and they could research past trials from the region with similar issues to inform their judgments. The system worked. But over the past few years, many of the attics and basements filled with paper records have turned into quagmires that are overwhelming courthouses, leading to structural damages, overwhelming records management challenges and a system that sometimes feels so antiquated that it is easy to wonder how it has lasted so long.

When a teenager at school can grab a smartphone and research old case files for a research paper while a judge is being given paper packets that were specially collected by a full-time clerk, the problem is clear. But it is always easier to fall into a quagmire than it is to escape. When you first enter you haven’t gathered all kinds of muck on your clothes from patches with more mud than solid ground. You also aren’t tired of trying to keep going for an extended period without relief. In many courtrooms around the country, clerks are overworked and budgets are stretched to their limits trying to keep up with outdated records management processes, few have the resources needed to take on an ambitious new project.

Because the resources really aren’t there to establish sweeping digitization projects that also meet security and regulatory demands throughout the legal industry – not to mention paper’s vital role in many facets of operation – seeking relief in more manageable phases is necessary. Working with a records management company can meet this need for many court systems feeling overwhelmed by their records storage predicaments.

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While it doesn’t appear that a third national television network will create a series on digital hoarding, which would add to the already crowded prime-time lineup devoted to hoarders, experts are calling on companies and individuals to act, the newspaper found.

“Digital clutter doesn’t beget mice or interfere with walking around the house,” Kit Anderson, the former president of the Institute for Challenging Disorganization, told the Wall Street Journal. “But it’s more insidious because no one else is going to insist that you get help.”

According to the report, digital hoarding encompasses everything from having a computer desktop cluttered with icons and shortcuts to companies amassing and storing boxes upon boxes of paper records or rooms overflowing with backup tapes. As a company, the last thing you want to be is a digital hoarder.

Unfortunately, some organizations can’t help themselves. The big data boom and tightening of both legal and industry compliance regulations has led decision-makers to craft their records management programs around the “keep everything” mantra. But that’s something that is much better on paper than in practice.

According to the Wall Street Journal report, people typically only use about 20 percent of what they save. The other 80 percent serves little purpose other than to bog down records storage practices and cause an information manager to lose their hair because of stress.

“It comes down to fear and indecision,” current Institute for Challenging Disorganization president Katherine Trezise told the Journal.

She gave the example of a person with too many desktop icons. They create so many shortcuts and clutter their screen because they are afraid of never being able to find them again. What happens, however, is that it’s still difficult to find the icons because they are lost in a sea of disorganization.

With a better approach to the process, a company can both ensure that pertinent information is kept and the records manager’s sanity is preserved. Here are a few things you should think about with a records management strategy.

Document Destruction

Contrary to your fears and beliefs, not every single piece of enterprise data must be kept. While employee records, contracts and other financial information is required by either law or regulation to be kept, stored and protected, there is still plenty of information that a company can purge.

When doing so, it’s important that the appropriate actions are taken. Experts recommend that secure shredding services be utilized for document destruction. Even though information is being disposed of doesn’t mean the organization is free of the responsibility to protect it. By shredding documents securely, decision-makers can rest assured that the information they contain is safe.

Offsite Storage

After all unnecessary information is tossed out, then comes the time for companies to decide what, in fact, should be kept. To further ease the pressure of the entire process, many companies now utilize the offsite records storage solutions of a professional information management company.

Taking data offsite further relieves the stress of records management. Service providers can pick up files at the company’s location and securely transport them to a storage facility. And just because they are no longer on premise doesn’t mean a company can’t access their records. In fact, they may be even more accessible through online portals and imaging on demand services.

Data Backup

Even with documents shredded and records stored appropriately offsite, some digital hoarders may still be concerned about the security of their data. As Trezise noted earlier, many hoarders are driven by the fear of losing their information.

But that doesn’t have to be the case with a data backup and recovery plan. Whether backed up on tape, the cloud, or with both, a company can rest assured that information is both protected and can be recovered and restored at a moment’s notice.

Managing data is becoming more difficult by the year. According to enterprise news provider Seeking Alpha, the growth of data volumes is expected to increase 500 percent during the next three years. And 90 percent of the data currently in circulation was created within the past two years alone, the news provider stated.

So instead of keeping everything, companies especially should be taking a more calculated approach to information management. While, yes, keeping everything will ensure that you have a specific record should it be requested in litigation. However, the stress and difficulty of ultimately finding and producing the data will be too great.

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Per the rules of discovery, you can be forced to dig up and unearth various forms of information – that can date back years – at a moment’s notice. So what will you do if an opposing party requests a piece of data that may be buried in backup tapes or stuffed in the back of a filing cabinet? How far would you go to get that file, document or email back in time to meet the deadlines set forth by the judge?

Hopefully, you’ve taken proactive information management measures so it never has to get to that point. How often is a state of panic the appropriate and most effective way to approach anything involving court or the law?

So long before you went and hired that medium to hold a séance in hopes of conjuring the information back from the other side, the better plan would have been to take a proactive approach to organizing and storing information. That’s something that too often slips through the cracks and is forgotten about until it’s too late, which most often becomes apparent the moment you begin digging for information.

Sending your records manager into the basement archive room with a flashlight certainly isn’t the best way to go about responding to a discovery request.

Half the battle of facing down the challenges of litigation is won long before a lawsuit, complaint or discovery request is filed. By preparing ahead of time, a company is more likely to come out of litigation with its reputation and integrity intact, while a records manager will be able to say the same of his or her sanity.

It starts with first knowing what types of information the company is sitting on. Conducting a thorough audit or investigation will allow a records manager to identify which information may be relevant to future litigation and thus be stored either offsite or within backup tapes for long-term posterity.

Digging even deeper, stored records should also be searchable so it’s easier to locate and produce them with the time comes. It’s important to keep in mind that finding stored records should require a magnifying glass, not an electron microscope.

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That must seem like child’s play for today’s companies that are swimming in the flood of data and the stress of meeting numerous compliance requirements – each more challenging than the last.

Today, the prevalence of multimedia and peripheral devices is perhaps the most serious problem for companies when it comes to their records management programs, according to a recent Information Management report.

“The issue is becoming a major challenge that is only going to get worse as mobile devices and multimedia files continue to infiltrate the corporate environment,” the report stated. “The industry is thirsty for a solution that overcomes the major barriers of multimedia content.”

Though paper remains an important format for critical records, and many companies still don’t have a legally credible records retention schedule, it’s not the only hassle keeping folks awake at night. Now, companies produce and store information on numerous platforms and in many forms, including email, video and audio content, as well as spreadsheets, slideshow presentations and word processing documents. And causing the most angst is perhaps peripheral devices.

While each format is unique, it is necessary that data from each are stored and maintained properly for anything from long-term operations and compliance to having the ability to respond to litigation.

Problem No. 1: The digital deluge

The fact that information now comes in many forms is not the only challenge for multimedia records management. The sheer volume of information can also present an organization with major headaches, Information Management said.

“Audio, video, photo and app/gaming files are becoming increasingly prevalent in the workplace as companies take greater advantage of modern technology for a variety of purposes,” the report stated.

This is mainly caused by the growing importance of connected devices, it said. Employees are using more endpoints than ever to produce, store and utilize mission-critical information. While these devices are working wonders for productivity and efficiency, they may be bogging down records management in a mud puddle of data.

To resolve the issue, it’s imperative that new endpoints are covered under an information management plan. That includes deciding what information produced on the devices must be saved and what can be destroyed to free up storage space.

Problem No. 2: What to keep?

One thing’s for sure, the “keep everything” approach to records management doesn’t solve problems. In fact, it makes things worse. Given the data deluge, attempts to keep every shred of information an organization produces will prove futile. There’s simply too much, not to mention not everything should be kept.

“This approach is certainly the most costly, with exorbitant sums being spent on server capacity to store it all,” stated Information Management, which also said the practice is rife with inefficiency.

It may be a tricky process, but it’s important for the company to go through and determine the necessity of keeping certain files. That may be tedious in the short term, but it will pay dividends over time in terms of free data storage space and the company’s ability to quickly and easily retrieve information requested for litigation.

Additionally, the methods by which a company practices records management could have a direct impact on its success, industry expert Oliver Morely recently told U.K. news provider Public Service. Morely is the chief executive officer of the U.K.’s National Archives and noted in an interview that document and records storage is a highly important area of any business.

Though times, and the complexities of records management, have changed, one thing remains the same: the critical importance of being able to keep your information safe, get it when you need it and manage your records management program with experience. After all, contained in the records you keep are the answers you’ll need when the time comes.

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I captured them with the story of
my company. “It all began with
fungus,” I told ‘em.
After their quizzical stares,
I smiled and carried on about how our company began
when Herman Knaust, aka The Mushroom King,
who grew and sold canned mushrooms,
purchased an iron mine for $9,000 USD in 1936 to grow
his fungal friends in and then turned it into a bunker
for business records in 1950. So was born Iron Mountain.

What inspires me most about the story is the Knaust’s creativity. He reconsidered the use of his space for more imaginative and revenue generating activity. This is exactly the thinking employed over at Facebook today, where the world’s largest social-networking company recently settled into new digs intended to keep space free for creative thinking and team brainstorming, as reported on Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

Though Facebook may have a different vibe than many companies, the hunt for better, more effective use of your existing real estate space is universal. Companies are beginning to rethink space. Dan Fasulo, managing director of Real Capital Analytics Inc. was quoted in the article as stating, “A new generation of corporate leaders is looking at space-planning as a core part of business to increase productivity and keep people in the office. The old guard looked at it as an expense.”

With executives looking under rocks to unearth new sources for productivity and cost savings, there arises a perfect opportunity for a review of their records and information management programs. Outsourcing records management alone can free up valuable space and reduce costs significantly.  For just a 100 person organization with only 500 cubic feet of records:

• An upfront expenditure of approximately $16,800 covers the 84 four-drawer vertical file cabinets needed to house the records.
• In addition, 504 square feet of floor space is needed to keep the cabinets – or $20,017 annually in real estate rental costs — based on an average rental fee of $27.39 per square foot plus 45% taxes.

Add to this the 15% -25% per employee per workday wasted time cost of hunting down the information necessary to do their jobs and you’ve got a serious opportunity to improve.

What are you doing to use your space more creatively? Have you considered outsourcing your records management program as means to free up valuable space while also keeping your records safe and being able to get it when you need it?

Christmas cookies abound in my family – sugar, oatmeal chocolate chip, chocolate peppermint and a new favorite of mine, the Chocolate Gooey Butter Cookie from the one and only grandmother everyone wants to have, Paula Deen.

As I was making my 4^th batch of these last night, I got to thinking about the cookie recipe. Recipes for delicious cookies, and really for any innovative product / technology or proprietary information, are vital records. What would we do if we did not have these recipes protected for longevity? After all, Christmas just ain’t Christmas without the cookie. At least in my family, anyway.

Has your company identified its greatest recipe’s? Are these vital records protected from deterioration, secure from fire, theft and unauthorized access? Is access to them locked down and are they easily available for retrieval should you need them for any reason?

Don’t lose your cookies and be caught without the ability to retrieve your vital records for use anytime you need them.

For example, a small leak in a pipe going to a bathroom can be a major disaster for organizations storing documents in their basement. If, over the course of a few months, that leak gradually seeps into a few boxes containing key documents it can set off a chain of mold and mildew that will make files illegible and force the company to deal with data loss.

Or consider an unexpected snowstorm like the one that hit the Northeast in late October. An unusual number of leaves on trees combined with the few inches of wet snow to bring down more power lines than most hurricanes take out when passing through region. Compliance officers don’t want to hear that old files were lost because 3 inches of snow created a power outage, cutting off heat to the building for two days, making the paper so brittle that it cracked when it was handled. And lawyers won’t like it if that file becomes relevant evidence in a future lawsuit.

The other problem businesses face when disaster strikes the headquarters, regardless of how minor the incident, is the lack of accessibility. What happens if the power is out for a day because a truck goes down a road it shouldn’t and clips power lines, while at the same time, a key document is needed to handle a client request? Is the company going to get flashlights and start sifting through boxes of files? Having a backup plan in place is integral to avoiding problems, even when dealing with minor disasters.

These kinds of unexpected and seemingly minor disasters can hit a business hard and do considerable damage. Organizations can prepare for them effectively by working with a records management company to streamline how files are handled and where they are stored. This arrangement can also make it easier to develop backup strategies that effectively respond to a disaster incident.

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Let’s break it down (get it??)

REDUCE

Organizations everywhere produce information at a blistering pace. Keeping up with it, both in paper and electronic formats, is enough to make any RIM professional dizzy. Add to that rising storage costs, rapid technology changes and new legislation and it plum causes palpitations.  Saving everything ‘just-in-case’ only increases the size of your problem.

Step one in gaining control is to know what you have. This required a team effort, but in understanding what you have you can take a big step towards a more efficient RIM process: reducing your volume. Paramount to RIM best practices is the records retention schedule and a record classification system. Creating these can be made easy, particularly if you partner with outside experts. They can help you assess current state and bring good RIM to life across your organization.

Once you know what you have what to keep and toss, you can eagerly pursue reducing your volume with secure shredding and data destruction services. Phew! The remaining pile just got smaller.

REUSE

Now you can manage what’s left: that which fuels key business processes across your business. Much of this may be reused and so you need process and systems in place to get the right input to the right person at the right time, while also protecting it the right way. Without this, you’ll often spend valuable time and resources searching for the information you need. Outsourcing all, or parts, of your RIM program can help you be confident you can get what you need when you need it.

RECYCLE

Once your information has reached the end of its useful life and it is eligible for destruction according to your policies, you can happily, and securely, shred it. Shredded paper is recycled back into other consumer paper products. Your resignation letter may someday become someone else’s offer letter.

RECOVER

Last, but not least, is recovery. Recovery for RIM is all about getting your business back up and running when things go awry, because your business depends on it.  Disaster Recovery planning, testing and support are unquestionably critical to getting your business what it needs to keep on keepin’ on.

It has been said that waste management’s objective is to extract the maximum practical benefits from products and to generate the minimum amount of waste. Similarly, the objective of RIM is to extract the maximum practical benefits from your information and to minimize the amount of wasted resources (time, space, money).

What did you learn in kindergarten that you manage your information, or life, today?

Go green!

Are you attending ARMA? If so, please join Washingtonian editor Garrett Graff, AIIM director Jesse Wilkins and Iron Mountain’s Richard Reese at Iron Mountain’s RIM Forum. For more information, please visit: http://ironmountain.com/arma/thingstodo.html

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