How do you see the value of Records Management (RM) for your organization? Is it a necessary evil with few tangible benefits, or does it have strategic value?

In this article, we look at the obvious benefits of RM including saving time, money, space, effort and reducing risk, and some of the not-so-obvious benefits.

Obvious benefits

1. Compliance

A common trigger for introducing records management into an organization is complying with updated laws, new regulations, or new policies. For example, organizations need RM to adhere to regulations like the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).

The cost of non-compliance is fines, penalties, business disruption, legal settlements and more. For example, Marriott International was fined about $24 million USD after payment information, names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and passport numbers of up to 500 million customers were compromised under GDPR regulation. According to the regulator’s statement, Marriott “failed to undertake sufficient due diligence when it bought Starwood and should also have done more to secure its systems.” The hotel chain was also fined hundreds of thousands by the Turkish data protection authority as well (not under GDPR), highlighting how one breach can result in multiple fines globally.

In another study, the biggest cost of non-compliance is business disruption, rather than fines or penalties. Why? Because when organizations are found to be non-compliant, they can be forced to implement compliance changes before being able to resume business.

A proper Records Management program helps organizations stay in compliance with changing laws and regulations and enables them to keep doing business globally.

2.  Reduce risk

Related to the previous point, the second obvious benefit of Records Management is a reduction of risk including risk of penalties, litigation, ransomware, theft of data, deletion of data, and more.

For example, RM protects content from malicious or accidental deletion by end-users because you have a protected version or copy of information. Federated solutions that use a data lake, such as Collabspace, makes risk reduction and protection even easier because all files and versions are automatically cloned for instant recovery in secure, encrypted, WORM-Compliant Storage with Microsoft Azure.

When records are managed according to a records retention policy, it’s also easier to respond to an audit or litigation. This reduces the burden and risk on an organization if there ever is an ongoing investigation. Record owners know what they have and where it is (and they know what they no longer have because it was destroyed according to a legally valid record retention policy).

3. Time savings and productivity gains

When an organization embarks on a RM program, a key benefit is the time savings and productivity gains for employees.

Records Management reduces content ROT (redundant, outdated and trivial content) because there is ‘controlled destruction’ of information that is not needed. This time and cost associated with employees searching for records or recreating the record if it cannot be found are significant.

In formal processes such as a complying with Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) requests, the time savings can be significant. We’ve seen organizations’ time to respond to a FOI request go from weeks to days or even hours. The ability to find all the records related to a particular subject, and to provide them in a reasonable time period is both good management and good policy.

Fewer content redundancies and less content duplication also gives end-users a better experience when looking for content. Onboarding time is reduced, and knowledge is shared with consistency and repeatability.

In your business case for RM, you could estimate both time-savings and additional savings based on recovered hours. For example, a recent study by Spiceworks/ZD survey commissioned by Microsoft found that:

People spend about an hour a day – or up to seven weeks a year – searching for or recreating information.

In other words, they could potentially get back 11 to 14% in daily productivity, rather than downloading the same file multiple times, digging through endless document folders, searching email archives, etc.

4. Reduce cost

With electronic Records Management, organizations can save costs by moving physical records to a digital format and saving on the storage space or cost of off-site storage.

Further, organizations can purchase less electronic or cloud storage if a sizeable amount of data is disposed of via accurate categorization and defensible disposition processes.

For example, if an organization has 200TB of data, and can reduce that by 25% through RM, they save about $80,000 a year (based on Gartner data from 2018 that estimated the cost of enterprise storage as $1651 / TB / year).

Not-so-obvious benefits

There are a few non-tangible or not-so-obvious benefits of records management for an organization:

5.  Better document management

Doing Records Management properly means you’re doing better document management.

If you’ve gone through tagging and structuring content for RM, you’ll have more effective document management. This has all kinds of benefits including the ability for employees to make smarter decisions, improving collaboration and improved employee engagement because staff have the tools they need to do their jobs.

6.  Support major business changes

Due diligence is required for major business transactions, like mergers and acquisitions or initial public offerings. With RM, you can drill down into your organization’s data and leverage it for the best deal possible easier and faster. Any time an organization wants to take advantage of its data or produce specific data for another party, it needs the ability to find, view, redact, and transfer data efficiently, and a proper RM system can move this process along.

7.  Happier employees

With a modern RM solution, employees can continue doing their work in any platform – email, network drives, SharePoint, Teams or other cloud storage system - with Records Management happening behind-the-scenes. An effective records management system automatically captures metadata, which means end users won’t have to manually input all metadata into a pop-up form when uploading and adding documents. Employees can find information, focus on their work and move things forward more effectively, leading to higher engagement and happier people.

8.  Improve cross-functional collaboration

“Information silos” is a common problem in organizations. With RM, employees can find things across teams or departments easier (if they have permission), which breaks down those dreaded silos in an organization. A proper RM system considers what others can see, uses labels or other mechanisms and presents information clearly to external stakeholders or collaborators.

9.  Improved safety

Records Management ensures that field workers have the correct and up-to-date policies, procedures and guidelines so that they can carry out their jobs in a safe and consistent manner. RM can also make documentation readily available in audit and investigations, as well as supporting a culture of health and safety at your organization.

10.  A foundation for automation

Records management can be a foundation for effective automation through artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning. AI is only as good as the training data it is fed, and if you start with well structured, consistent, detailed, and relevant data (foundational elements that provide both a great user experience and support Records Management activities), you’ll also have a better foundation not only for artificial intelligence applications automation but also workflows, integration between other systems, and reporting.

For example, Viva Topics from Microsoft uses AI to automatically surface knowledge through Microsoft 365 tools including SharePoint, Teams and email. Viva Topics works well when it can work through data sets that are relevant, authoritative and accurate. An effective RM system helps AI and machine learning technology identify this knowledge faster and more effectively. A proper RM implementation also enables automated metadata by extracting key information from both structured and unstructured data.

11.  Future migration and integrations are easier

In the short-term, you will likely spend some time and effort doing migration to a new Records Management system. This time is worth it because you end up with a usable and effective RM system, and all the benefits as described above.

This investment in Records Management also gets you on a path where you keep the high-value content and dispose of content that is no longer needed. There’s less overall content to work with, which makes it easier to migrate content to another platform, upgrade to another version or even integrate with other systems. This has the indirect benefit of less vendor lock-in, so you can move to another platform more easily when needed.

In this webinar, learn how we helped a government agency migrate millions of records to a new Records Management platform. Watch now!

12.  Gain a better understanding of your content

The process of enabling RM helps you understand what your content is, where it is, and the value of it. With a move to a RM system, you need to understand the context of your content and the business value. This makes your role at the organization even more critical and enables you to have better conversations with your stakeholders and work across teams more effectively.

13.  Preserve knowledge for the future

Good Records Management allows you to identify records that have permanent or historical value to your organization. These records are not only an archive, but could also be used by employees or an R&D department in the future. Records Management provides the institutional memory of the regulatory and business environment that led to policies, along with the recordkeeping. Knowing how that environment influenced your organization’s information governance will enable the people who inherit the policies to make more informed decisions about what to modify or remove down-the-road.

President Obama 2011’s memo on managing government records probably said it best:

”Records…provide the prism through which future generations will understand and learn from our actions and decisions.“

— Barack Obama

Summary

One of the main challenges in understanding and quantifying Records Management benefits is the inability to quantify the return on investment in hard costs and cost savings. At its core, records management is typically seen as an operational expense line item or improves the bottom line by only reducing expenses.

However, a more sensible approach is to look at improved governance and records management as a strategic imperative and a key to growth or profitability. It has the power to unlock knowledge, help people get their work done and improve overall productivity.  

What do I do next? There’s a lot to do before choosing and implementing records management technology. We can help you tackle the program of work including the people, process and technology involved. Reach out and we'll help you get started.

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