Where is it?

What NOT to do to achieve document retention success

Last week, I combed my house, minivan, husband’s car, various bags and containers within my house, all to find my daughter’s dance shoes. She needed them that night, of course. But, after turning over every stone, I had to throw in the towel. They just weren’t there. Fortunately for us, they turned up at the dance studio. But it got me thinking about how much pain this could have caused had they really been gone.

We’ve all been there. You look and look, and look some more, but it just plain isn’t there. Sometimes it’s a big deal when things go missing, especially at work. In my case, it wasn’t an earth-shattering loss (maybe it was to my daughter), but dance shoes are replaceable. But, what if it was something that couldn’t be easily, if at all, replaced – like an important contract or email? You can’t just substitute a similar contract for the one you can’t find.

Today, companies need to keep, and be able to easily access, all kinds of corporate communication and documents in the event they are needed for eDiscovery purposes. According to the article, Three Common Mistakes Associated with Document Retention Strategies, the three most common document retention miscues are:

1. Failure to enact and enforce a company-wide retention policy. Do you still have paper copies in your company, or is everything electronic? How do you manage the various formats and versions? What do you keep, for how long do you keep it, and what don’t you need to keep? If everything is already electronic, how do you manage the various formats, including email, instant messages, and voice mails? Tip: You’ll need to make company policies to deal with all your file types, and then enforce those policies.
2. Substituting a backup system for a data repository. Are you just archiving your files, or are you storing them in a way in which they can be searched for and retrieved easily? Are you just keeping everything forever, or are you keeping what you need to keep, for as long as you are legally required to keep it? Tip: You’ll need to establish a system where you only keep what you need to for as long as you need to, and are able to retrieve it when you need to.
3. Lack of automation in your retention/disposition strategy. Do you know the lifecycle of every file in your system? Are files moved and purged automatically when they need to be, or is human intervention needed? Tip: You’ll need to have automated processes in place to manage the lifecycle of your files so you can take the potential for human error out of the equation.

Bottom line:

You need to retain your files in a consistent manner across your company, make sure they are easily retrievable, and manage them according to their individual lifecycles in order to have document retention success. For more details on how to make sure you are getting the most out of your EDMS and avoiding document retention mistakes, the entire article is available here.

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