Records Management and the Recipe for Cost-Effective Compliance
suffice for fundamental, date-based retention of content—keep a specific document for seven years, after which time you delete it, for example. However, regulations and the risks of litigation are increasingly mandating not just how long documents are kept, but also how they are kept.
Regulations such as SEC 17a-4 mandate specific media types—in this case, that financial institutions retain all dealer- broker correspondences not just for a period of three years, but on a non-rewritable media. And along with contracts and product liability, labor and employment disputes are a significant source of litigation for corporations.
Being able to automatically store all email correspondences from the legal and human resources departments onto non-rewritable media can provide an additional fortification for your defense in the event of litigation. Of course, without a reliable means of identifying which emails are appropriate for such policies, the company would have no choice but to archive all emails in this fashion. So can archiving drive the record designation in this case? Hardly—it is the process of identifying the content as a record of a certain type that determines the manner in which it must be archived.
Similarly, many organizations have internal policies about how high-value content should be physically stored. Consider the numerous environmental disasters of late—it may have once seemed excessively paranoid to have a policy that vital records be stored in a physical location a minimum distance in miles away from a major office. Today, redundant storage of essential records is a critical safeguard. By unifying the fundamental capabilities of archiving and records management, content itself can actually begin to drive the determination of where it lives.
What if Record Definitions Change Over Time?
Ongoing courtroom scuffles, particularly wrongful termination and employee harassment suits, have demonstrated that a transient, seemingly inconsequential email can quickly become a legally discoverable document with grave implications. And accordingly, the process by which it must be stored, preserved and retrieved can quickly change as well.
- A regulation is subsequently amended, broadening the scope of what electronic data is relevant—documents that were archived as one type of record, or even as non-records, now must be retained according to a different methodology.
- A regulation is amended, mandating that content be stored on a specific type of storage media; a significant event (such as a merger or acquisition) changes the importance of a document, requiring that it now be stored according to strict security policies.
Traditional information lifecycle management strategies that place record retention and control in the storage system are only suited to manage records according to static policy. They offer little recourse to organizations in changing the methodologies by which that content is kept. It's akin to an oven with a single temperature setting!
With a centralized records management system controlling the underlying archiving system, which determines where content lives in the storage environment, organizations can begin to automate the process of storing content in a compliant and cost-effective manner. The storage infrastructure becomes a dynamic environment, where content is automatically and intelligently migrated to the most appropriate place.
Compliant, Cost-Effective and Self-Managing Enterprise Content
With a consolidated approach to records management and archiving, companies can be certain that record policies are being applied uniformly across all enterprise content, and that a single search activity can retrieve all relevant content—reducing the risks and costs associated with discovery orders and regulatory audits.
When unified with archiving fundamentals, records management becomes about much more than just keeping or deleting content; it becomes the enabling technology that allows content to manage itself. The content drives decisions about where it should live at each individual stage of its lifecycle—and that gives organizations a powerful new means of automating compliance processes in a cost-effective manner.
Open Text enables companies to improve the management of corporate risk by helping them handle the explosion of digital information and take back control of their business content. Open Text helps organizations capture, organize and manage content by taking advantage of the tools their teams work with every day and allowing a unified presentation in the context of their business processes. In addition to improved team effectiveness, accelerated speed of decision-making and enhanced opportunity for innovation, Open Text enterprise content management (ECM) solutions increase ROI by reducing risk, streamlining key processes and leveraging existing IT investments.