A Departmental Approach to Recordkeeping Solutions

Businesses are inundated with information from everywhere, in many forms. While this presents a problem for many organizations, the reality is that it can actually provide a great opportunity for companies large and small—as long as they can maintain the data they want, and use it to their advantage. An enterprise-wide recordkeeping strategy is needed to maximize organizational benefits. Defining a recordkeeping strategy requires a step-by-step approach:

• Decide what information is crucial for managing the business;

• Learn what documents are necessary to meet regulatory compliance; and

• Determine in what form each type of information is best retained—paper or electronic.

Regulatory compliance has joined the forefront of issues facing CEOs today. According to a recent survey by AIIM International, 11% of the top executives surveyed said managing information to meet regulatory compliance was one of the three biggest challenges businesses face today. Other top concerns:

• Increasing profits and productivity (46%);

• Improving customer service (16%); and

• Remaining competitive, ensuring quality, controlling costs (27%).

Once the top concerns have been identified, the step-by-step approach begins by analyzing the organization to identify which department would show the fastest return on investment or the greatest impact on the core business process by implementing a recordkeeping solution. Then, through an analysis of the departmental processes, the recordkeeping solution is configured to meet that department’s specific needs. (Recordkeeping is an information management system that manages both paper and electronic records with consistent retention management controls.) A complete recordkeeping solution increases the reliability and trustworthiness of records storage and retrieval, with the benefit of improving work efficiency and reducing legal liability.

Step-by-Step Deployment

Just as rolling out any application enterprise-wide, the project can be overwhelming. The approach of starting with one department and growing to multi-department deployment provides many benefits, including cost savings. While some configurations will be department-specific, other parts of the implementation are scalable and can be utilized across multiple departments, creating economies of scale. Look for a recordkeeping system that utilizes similar configurations to increase both the efficiency and cost effectiveness of subsequent department installations.

In keeping with the theme of efficiency and cost-effectiveness, recordkeeping systems should be able to be integrated into existing (host) software. Employees need to be able to work in their current line of business software and shouldn’t have to learn new applications to utilize e-mail, faxes, paper files and electronic documents.

Information holds a different business value over the course of its lifecycle, as well as from one department to another, and must be managed accordingly. By growing departmental solutions that are inter-related and managed by the overlying best practices and records management principles, businesses can manage their assets across the entire enterprise.

Recordkeeping is as much a strategy as a product. Just as a business needs a strategic plan to succeed, so must it have a strategy for managing its information. A complete recordkeeping solution provides the right information to the right people at the right time and should offer the following capabilities:

• Incremental departmental solutions—can be configured to work in various departments with host applications;

• Scalable—can grow across multiple departments. Solution must be configurable to work with varying departmental needs—whether it’s starting with paper management in one department, electronic records in another department, or workflow in yet a third department. Scalability and the ability to grow with the changing needs of the organization is key;

• Able to manage retention—can classify documents by their business value. The records are managed through their lifecycle and destroyed within the legal and operational requirements of the business; and

• Flexible—can manage business records, regardless of form—paper or electronic.

To develop a corporate-wide information management system, follow these steps:

• Develop an information management strategy to meet the company’s most pressing needs;

• Find a recordkeeping system that is flexible, scalable, compatible with host applications and able to manage retention; and

• Implement the recordkeeping solution one department at a time to allow the company to first maximize the departmental benefits, then use the knowledge gained in the installation to make subsequent departmental implementations even more efficient and cost effective.

Once a corporate-wide information management solution is in place, businesses will be able to see direct improvements in any business areas that need reliable information to make sound decisions. In addition, a good recordkeeping system will protect privacy, secure vital records, maintain data integrity, manage retention and ensure regulatory compliance. As the amount and complexity of information grows each year, so must the ability of the recordkeeping system. No company can afford to be without access to accurate, reliable information relevant to their business.

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Smead is uniquely positioned to apply over 98 years of records management experience into recordkeeping solutions. Committed to providing innovative solutions for the management of information, Smead has developed a comprehensive line of recordkeeping software