The ABCs of Records Management

The integrity and security of information is open to considerable risk when files and documents that represent corporate records reside on local drives across heterogeneous computing environments and retention and deletion decisions are left to individuals. Loss of valuable information—which is potentially critical to an organization's defense—and the loss of vital corporate knowledge when people leave an organization can also significantly impact the bottom line.

In order to meet stringent regulatory standards, the tracking of content throughout its logical lifecycle is becoming an increasingly complex activity that requires the integration of records management practices and procedures with collaboration and content management. Information is a vital corporate resource, and, as such, organizations are demanding the ability to gather, view and analyze information through a common, user-friendly interface.

To act as the foundation for other document systems, records management solutions must be enterprise-worthy; that is, capable of running on a number of operating systems, open to integration, and allowing users access from desktop and Web-based environments. Investing in an enterprise content management (ECM) solution that incorporates records management functionality will allow organizations to integrate sophisticated record classification and lifecycle management into their collaborative processes. Audits can be performed in an efficient and cost-effective manner, and information is destroyed on a consistent basis.

The ABCs of Records Management:

With the daily pressures to comply with regulations, changes to legislation and the pace of today's global market, managing the logical lifecycle of content has become a crucial component to ECM. When organizations utilize records management functionality to better manage and track the lifecycle of both their electronic and physical content, it can not only help achieve compliance, but boost productivity and create return on investment (ROI) as well.

Achieve Compliance and Reduce Business Risk

Compliance is an issue that spans across all industries and many countries, therefore organizations are increasingly challenged with finding solutions that can carefully track, manage and ensure that content complies with the growing number of regulations. Records management enables organizations to manage content from initial creation through final archival and destruction stages. It also enables users to work collaboratively across the globe, to quickly find vital information, as well as audit and report on regulated activities. Without an effective records management solution, many organizations would simply collapse under the weight of their existing information and the risk associated with uncontrolled content.

Boost Productivity and Improve Operational Efficiency

Organizations that cannot efficiently manage their information not only risk losing new business, they may also fail to adequately support existing business operations. Effectively managing content empowers organizations to succeed by boosting productivity, improving operational efficiencies and reducing expenses.

Using a records management solution to manage a corporation's content also allows for better automation of business processes, providing greater efficiency and control over processes such as the electronic distribution of content. Through integration with other systems, content can be included for review when collaborating on other documents. Information must be accessible enterprise-wide through secure desktop and Web-based interfaces by all business users, but the control of the information lifecycle is maintained by the records management system.

In order to succeed, companies need to know how to use the information and content that exists within and around their organizations to deliver better productivity and achieve competitive advantage. Simply creating a global network and gathering mountains of information is not enough. To make effective decisions, data must be put into context and turned into information. The contextual information is added through the regime of a fileplan, which ensures that the users of company records can appropriately make use of its state, context and lifecycle stage.

Create ROI and Optimize Existing Investments

Implementing a records management solution can deliver ROI by reducing the time it takes to locate vital information for corporate decision-making. A records management solution enforces the structuring of information and also provides the users of those records with important meta information around the content. This ensures that corporations base decisions on the right piece of information as opposed to a disorganized mix of shared files without structure sent over for decision-making via e-mail. With a comprehensive ECM platform that incorporates records management functionality, organizations can expand their opportunities and productivity, optimizing their existing investments and generating greater ROI.

The increase in ROI highlights the need for companies to invest in ECM solutions that deliver a variety of technologies to the organization through a standard platform. ROI, as opposed to simply perceived need, drives the spread of ECM solutions throughout the company. Senior management is able to deliver value to shareholders making each employee's day-to-day tasks simpler and more effective.

What is Records Management?

A record is any and all recorded information contained in any medium that belongs to an organization and may be used to arrive at a business decision. In the corporate environment, records are used to support the decision-making process, communicate information, ensure accountability, and document organizational memory.

Records management is the discipline of managing records to meet operational needs, accountability requirements and community expectations. Records management solutions work by allowing you to attach logical rules to information. These rules tell the system when it is OK to delete documents or move them to a data archive, either physically in boxes or electronically on storage devices such as CD-ROMs. The difference between a piece of content or information and a record is that the first is rather unspecified in its meaning, form and relevance whereas the latter is an important piece of information which is kept within an associated taxonomy (the fileplan) and lives along a specified lifecycle. In essence, all records are content or information, but not all information or content are records. A records management system as part of an ECM system therefore helps to gain control over the content created as part of daily business.

Records Management and ECM

When integrated as a core component to a comprehensive ECM solution, records management enables organizations to manage the complete logical lifecycle of all types of corporate records and information holdings, regardless of their media, physical or electronic.

ECM helps to take away the complexities of records management, as it integrates the classification process into the content creation process. An ECM system integrates search, e-mail and document management and presents users with a common interface to access all forms of information. This makes the records management processes transparent and accessible to the end user and not just the records manager. Since electronic documents are created and used by a number of different applications, the records management platform must communicate with these applications in one form or another and become the foundation or common point of lifecycle control for all applicants.

ECM extends records management to other information management applications by offering solutions that are tightly integrated with groupware or other document management systems. This ensures content integrity, minimizes risk and helps to ensure compliance with varying regulations. Beyond regulatory issues, records management allows for the migration of content from high-cost disk storage to low-cost storage devices when it reaches a certain point in its lifecycle, reducing operational costs. Because it can be extended to support full document lifecycle management, ECM improves total cost of ownership, eliminating the need to invest in new hardware to address content growth and lifecycle issues.

Open Text's Livelink ECM—Records Management

Open Text delivers the business benefits associated with effective records management-compliance and risk reduction—through Livelink ECM—Records Management™. At the same time, it provides the basis for a secure and scalable records management platform that is capable of integration into other document-related technologies.

Open Text provides a comprehensive, policy-based solution that enables you to manage the complete lifecycle of all of your corporate records and information holdings, whether they are documents in paper or electronic format, or physical objects such as CD-ROMs or videocassettes. Livelink ECM—Records Management is a Web-based optional module for Livelink Enterprise Server that lets you to apply records management classifications to all objects in the Livelink Enterprise Server repository, as well as to physical objects that are represented by records in the repository. Livelink ECM—Records Management enables you to create and maintain classifications/file plans, records management database tables, retention and disposition schedules, as well as providing them with the ability to conduct and audit the circulation (check-in/check-out) of all physical objects, manage the cycle of vital records, generate color labels and barcodes and to run predefined reports, such as classification, recall listing and disposition reports. Livelink ECM—Records Management also enables you to perform disposition searches and to place "holds" on items. Livelink ECM-Records Management integrates into the leading groupware platforms to also manage e-mails and provides for intuitive classification methodologies for the end users, guaranteeing user adoption throughout the entire enterprise. Livelink ECM-Records Management integrates with the Livelink Enterprise Archive to map logical lifecycles onto connected storage platforms, which ties the concept of tiered storage to the importance and relevance of the underlying content.

Characteristics of Records Management

A records management solution must provide organizations with the ability to:

• Define corporate retention policies and schedules and the underlying legal and/or corporate justification for these policies;

• Apply these retention schedules to all relevant physical and electronic objects within their organization, without impacting business users;

• Create "holds" in the case of an existing or impending legal action or audit;

• Suspend the lifecycle of objects that are subject to a hold;

• Prepare all relevant materials for delivery to the requesting party (for example, an auditor);

• Find all objects that should and may be destroyed, and facilitate their approval and destruction;

• Keep an audit trail of all actions including destruction;

• Support the tracking and transfer of physical objects as they move from location to location;

• Support the management of physical storage space such as warehouses;

• Support the capture of e-mail as records; and

• Support the definition of different storage mediums based on an object's use and retention.

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Open Text™ is a market leader providing enterprise content management (ECM) solutions that bring together people, processes and information in global organizations. Throughout its history, Open Text has matched its tradition of innovation with a track record of financial strength and growth. Today, the company supports more than 20 million seats across 13,000 deployments in 144 countries and 12 languages worldwide To learn more about Records Management and ECM, request a copy of our book—Enterprise Content Management: Turning Content into Competitive Advantage .