Enterprise Records Management Strategies

Whether it be businesses, government agencies, non-profit organizations, families or an individual person, it is essential that every human enterprise is able to provide recorded evidence of past events, transactions and decisions. Fundamental to both private and public sectors, particularly in government-regulated industries, records management (RM) has become a basic element of modern enterprise life that is too often taken for granted. Records ensure that an enterprise can:

• Conduct its business in an orderly, efficient, and accountable manner;

• Deliver services consistently and equitably;

• Document its policies, decisions, and outcomes to stakeholders and regulators;

• Meets its legislative and regulatory requirements, including audits;

• Protect itself in litigation;

• Function in a financially and ethically accountable manner;

• Protect corporate interests and the rights of employees, clients, and other stakeholders;

• Provide continuity of operations in an emergency or disaster; and

• Maintain its corporate and institutional memory.

Enterprise Records Management in Context

Enterprise RM is categorized by two distinct formats—physical RM (pRM) and electronic RM (eRM). Although enterprises are beginning to implement eRM, many will continue to keep older records in physical forms for the foreseeable future, making pRM a necessity as well. In today’s enterprise, RM occurs within many IT application contexts and systems for managing documents, e-mail, databases, forms, imaging, workflow, web sites and customer relationships. Unlike other electronic documents and information objects, electronic records must bear characteristics that can be proven or demonstrated, including authenticity, reliability, integrity and usability.

eRM Strategies

The information content lifecycle comprises a set of stages: Creation or Receipt, where a document is first created or a completed form first received; Active Analysis, Use and Dissemination, where data undergoes various transformations; and Retention and Disposition, where the record is declared legitimate and either preserved indefinitely or destroyed after a given time period.

Contemporary enterprises already possess many automated information management capabilities but have not automated RM, instead using manual systems in paper format. With the recognition that records are created or received at each stage of the information content lifecycle, Enterprise eRM systems enable more efficient and effective capture and management of records at each stage than traditional RM systems.

To arrive at eRM capability, business, technical and people strategies must be pursued:

1. Business Strategy

Benefits: Upon eRM implementation, worker productivity will rise with records retrievable from desktops rather than searching paper files. Improved knowledge and control over record and non-record holdings enhances customer relations due to quicker access to information resources while reducing the high cost of discovery, potentially allowing ready access to all subpoenaed records if faced with litigation. Recovery from disasters is also quickened, since vital business records can be easily retrieved from secure off-site backup facilities. A surplus in accrued savings can be realized due to reduced paper and physical storage costs.

Costs of eRM: Enterprises may require substantial capital investment into the deployment of eRM, including potential work process reengineering, desktop user training and management restructuring. If the previous pRM program has been under-resourced, costs will arise in bringing the program up to date, as eRM systems require traditional RM program data as their basic input.

Business Decision: In contemporary enterprises, where information is often “born electronic” or retained in electronic form, the benefits of RM outweigh the costs, as records are essential to the survival, welfare, and prosperity of an enterprise.

2. Technical Strategy. An enterprise eRM system typically cannot function simply by “plugging it in,” instead requiring modification before it is implemented. Integration: During the integration planning process, IT planners must decide how a prospective eRM application will impact legacy systems and how many resources are required to integrate it with existing resource management systems. For example, many organizations are not capturing e-mail messages and associated metadata that qualify as records. And many enterprises lack policies and procedures governing Web sites as records as well as eRM integration with web content-management systems. Vital Records and Continuity of Operations Planning: Integrating eRM into IT architectures and planning entails routine identification of the enterprise’s electronic vital records, ensuring that steps are taken for easy record accessibility in the event of emergencies or disasters.

Openness and Scalability: In acquiring eRM systems, special consideration must be given toward their openness and scalability. Product suites must be able to work properly in both small and large organizational settings and be capable of handling various record formats and mediums.

Auto-filing Systems: eRM products often require user involvement in deciding whether an information object is a record, and upon confirmation, where the record should be filed. The primary source of RM errors is often caused by poor decision-making, an indication of inadequate training. Ideally, eRM systems would be transparent to users, requiring no user involvement, but doing so may require high degrees of configuration.

3. People Strategy. Employees often lack understanding of the important role RM plays in an enterprise, largely due to its previous back-office function. In order to minimize resistance to eRM system introductions, people strategy must be applied. User friendliness: It is critical that the use of eRM at the client level be as user friendly as possible to maximize user cooperation.

Pilot Programs and Business Process Reengineering: It may be necessary to redesign affected work processes in the deployment of RM systems. Some enterprises find it useful to conduct pilot experiments with eRM systems in a small business unit before implementing the system company-wide.

Training: Everyone who might be affected by the eRM system may require routine training. Records managers need training in order to successfully make the transition from their traditional role into the IT environment. Successful enterprises often find classroom programs combined with computer-based training (CBT) to be the most effective in reinforcing and applying what has been taught.

Challenges and Solutions

RM solutions may be approached from several perspectives, depending on the media or record type being managed, how the records fit into a business process and are accessed, and how RM fits into the overall information management strategy and IT architecture. The three primary concerns facing enterprises include record sources, the impact of business process on records, and record access:

1. Source of Enterprise Records

Physical Records: The transition to eRM from a pRM system often includes the dilemma of whether older records should remain in physical format or whether only future records will be electronic. Enterprises adopt pRM as part of an overall Enterprise RM strategy due to the high costs of converting into electronic format, as well as the fact that certain records may be physical objects other than paper or microfilm (whose value lies partially in their physical form).

 : When it comes to converting physical records into electronic format, an imaging solution provides media conversion capabilities and associated indexing and retrieval functions.

Records Already in Electronic Format: For records “born electronic” or converted from physical formats, an eRM solution is appropriate for enterprises that are adopting eDM for productivity purposes by further managing documents throughout the entire information lifecycle.

E-mail: Enterprises know that e-mail use is rapidly increasing and that many e-mails contain record information not captured by IT systems. Auto-filing with eRM systems, when properly configured and fine-tuned, provides an automated, “back-office” method for capturing e-mails and attachments without requiring user involvement.

2. Business Processes and their Impact on Records

Many enterprises are automating the process that determines whether a document is designated as being “record worthy” through workflow solutions.

3. Accessing Enterprise Records and Other Information Assets

Users find it most convenient when they can access enterprise records from tools that are intrinsically integrated into their work environment, where they are able to view and retrieve information assets from Web browsers, e-mail interfaces, various authoring tools, Windows desktops, and Windows Explorer. A corporate portal can also provide a single point of access to organizational knowledge and facilitates searches across all repositories. This global approach to information access may appeal to enterprises whose information resources are varied enough to inhibit cross-repository searching by allowing for wider search radiuses.

End Results: IT and RM Synchronized to Minimize Risk and Liability

Enterprises are recognizing that the integration of RM into the “front office” functions of managing basic information resources is not only desirable but essential to their very survival. Managers now understand the critical interdependence between information systems and the information processed and stored in those systems, just as the realization is dawning that information holdings can no longer exist independent of information systems. IT professionals know they must incorporate RM concepts and principles into the way they think about their work, while record managers should include working familiarity with IT among their basic skill sets. Lastly, both IT professionals and records managers should recognize that the enterprise’s information resources are core valuables, and by protecting and properly handling such information jewels, it is possible to greatly reduce the enterprise’s financial and legal risk and liability.

HLB Tautges Redpath Accounts for Records and Documents

In order to manage information as an asset and provide excellent client service, HLB Tautges Redpath, Ltd. (HLB TR), a CPA and consulting firm in St. Paul/Minneapolis, Minnesota, sought to replace its outdated records management software and improve its document handling processes. Like other accounting firms, it wanted to improve hardware and software, review internal processes, allocate more resources for training, and attract qualified staff.

“Any organization should be applying the principals of records management no matter what the industry. Good records management starts at document creation and is particularly important during active use. Since documents can’t be separated from the business process, it is vital to manage them from start to finish,” said Lynette Downing, Certified Records Manager at HLB TR.

Review of Records

HLB TR’s original system of managing documents relied on a homegrown database used for tracking documents and applying retention schedules. The solution met HLB TR’s needs for quite a few years, but eventually the company started to outgrow it. Consequently, HLB TR initiated a firm-wide process review to examine its records and document management needs.

“We wanted an end-to-end solution that managed the whole document lifecycle and took into consideration both document and records management,” said Downing. Included in the process review was a look at “paperless audit” applications. However, they didn’t offer an enterprise-wide approach to information management. Implementing a new document management, records management and imaging system was part of a strategic move to build on technology infrastructure improvements made over the past few years and position the firm for future efficiency gains.

After considering a number of alternatives, the firm chose a solution from ADV Document Systems, Inc. that used Hummingbird document and record management solutions as the core of its system. ADV, a Hummingbird premier partner headquartered in Minneapolis, MN, helped HLB TR select and configure the total solution. ADV provides pre- and post-sale support and services including: ROI studies, project methodology reports and developing organizational standards for capture and storage.

“We cost-justified it on the fact that the Hummingbird DM front-end was going to greatly improve document retrieval to support our services while the Hummingbird RM back-end follows right with our strategic plan,” said Downing. The Hummingbird solution uses one database to track electronic and paper documents from creation through destruction, maintaining the complete document history from start to finish. One Database for All Information Needs

“Everybody uses it from the receptionist on up to the president,” said Downing. “What users really like is having all information, regardless of media, at their fingertips. We search for a client and bring up not only the electronic documents for that client but also what paper records exist and where they are. It gives them one database to search for all of the information that supports their projects. ” Documents from various sources are profiled using common classifications based on projects. For example, a client’s merger & acquisition project may contain documents such as an Excel workbook used to calculate the purchase price, a Word document of the purchase agreement received from an attorney, an e-mail from the client, a fax from the CPA representing the seller or the profile of a paper file indicating where a file is located. These varied source documents are all displayed in the search results list and are available regardless of their source. Even if the documents are “checked out” and in use by another employee, they are available in a read-only format. The key to document sharing is getting them in the system as early in the process as possible. When a project is complete, all documents are available on-line.

Industry: Accounting and Consulting Organization: HLB Tautges Redpath, Ltd. The Challenge:

• Aging records management software needed to be replaced;

• Paper records and electronic documents were managed in separate systems, costing time and money by inefficiently tracking record life cycles;

• Too much time wasted finding paper files and routing them to staff; and

• The firm wanted industry-leading tools to recruit the best and brightest talent to maintain the high standards of service clients expect.

Hummingbird Solution:

Records Management, Document Management, Imaging Key Benefits:

• Enterprise-wide solution—one, company-wide, database of information that allows efficient searching and complete life cycle management of documents and records;

• Improved client service and reduced number of client callbacks;

• Marketing tool to attract new clients as well as employees;

• Secure systems with a full backup of records in the event of a disaster; and

• Better records = better decision-making.

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J. Timothy Sprehe, Ph. D. is a records management authority noted for RM policy and research development for the United States Office of Management and Budget and NARA; chairing eRM conferences; and for currently chairing the AIIM International Standards Committee on Integrated Functional Requirements for eDM and eRM systems. Hummingbird Ltd. is a global enterprise software company employing 1300 people in nearly 40 offices around the world. Hummingbird Enterprise creates a 360° view of content with products that are both modular and interoperable, including Document and Records Management, Portal and Knowledge Management, Business Intelligence, and Data Integration. Please visit: Hummingbird.