Four Environmental Factors that Successful Organizations Should Consider as part of their Records Management Strategy

By Sylvia Feldman, Optical Image Technology, Inc.

Technology is rapidly reshaping the business world. Like it or not, in order to be successful, you have to take proactive measures to stay at the top of your game; otherwise, you will be forced to make reactive changes merely to keep up with your competitors. Records management is a realm that all too often gets overlooked as organizations make infrastructure upgrades and improvements.

Successful companies, however, measure and adapt to trends in the business environment, responding to changes in technology with a vision for the future. Four trends, in particular, point to the reality that a solid records management strategy is no longer an option; it is a necessity.

The difference between a not-quite electronic environment and an efficient e-office

Businesses today recognize the need to transition from paper processes to electronic. The world around us is making that transition, whether we are equipped to handle it or not. Unfortunately, many organizations are immersed in the chaos of a mixed business environment—one that still relies on paper or microfilm and is not entirely electronic. This phenomenon results in a business atmosphere that can be more complicated than a strictly paper setting. In an effort to comply with SOX, HIPAA, and other regulations, organizations are finding that they have to adopt multiple sets of standards. Efficiency suffers, as do records management efforts.

To receive the optimal benefit from electronic processes, organizations benefit from going beyond access and taking advantage of related technologies such as automated workflow, lifecycle management, retention schedules, audit trails, and data migration. By taking their electronic processes to the next step in a logical progression, organizations are able to realize ROI that goes well beyond the financial realm. They are able to not only access their records, but truly manage them.

Customer expectations of immediacy

As consumers become more tech-savvy, immediate access to customer information is now the norm. When customers call your organization with questions about their records, they expect immediate answers and fast turnaround. This is difficult if not impossible to achieve in a paper-based system. To this end, businesses that hope to stay competitive need to offer their customers the option of self-service. Web portals, on-line forms and applications, and straight-through processing are the tools through which organizations now import customer-submitted information. Workflow operates behind the scenes to make processing seamless, efficient, and immediate, and to designate exactly what information should and should not be retained for corporate records.

When customers are empowered with the ability to submit their own information, errors are reduced, and data-entry staff can be appointed to other skilled positions throughout your enterprise. Portals and on-line forms can also help organizations to manage internal company records associated with HR policies. Authorized staff can access and submit documentation with the click of a mouse. Pre-configured rules minimize the potential for errors, and ensure that information is electronically routed to the right person at the right time for signatures or further processing. Workflow ensures that processes are standardized and complete, and facilitates exception handling for those records that may need more thorough review.

Corporate compliance

Today’s corporate compliance requirements necessitate the enactment of stringent records management policies with respect to privacy, security, tracking, and monitoring—policies that can only be addressed with electronic access to your records. In a paper environment, a legitimate response to HIPAA, SOX, and other regulatory requirements is virtually unattainable. With electronic processes, rules, procedures, events, performance monitoring, and analytics are brought together for improved decision-making as well as regulatory compliance.

Compliance oversight, as it relates to records management, means that throughout each stage of the document lifecycle, you need to know that your records are secure, accessible only to authorized users. You need to be able to provide documentation that shows who accessed your records, and when they were accessed. Electronic document management provides the security and the audit trails that are a necessary component to federal and industry regulations. With the click of the mouse, you have the ability to demonstrate that your records management strategy addresses regulatory compliance requirements. Furthermore, by automating your compliance efforts, you remove the potential for error.

The constant threat of litigation

One of the most pressing environmental factors that is motivating companies to improve their records management efforts is the threat of eDiscovery. The possibility of litigation dictates a need to be able to locate corporate records (including email messages). It is no longer enough to operate with integrity. You need to be able to prove that your operations are reliable, and to have procedures in place to document your reliability. According to a June 2007 survey from Contoural and Osterman Research,

Significant gaps persist between policy and practice and between IT and legal departments…more than 69% are not litigation ready; only 6% can immediately and confidently handle eDiscovery requests; more than half surveyed are at risk of being unable to enforce a litigation hold.

How long does it take your company to locate and retrieve corporate records? What measures have you taken to identify, centralize, and manage those records? As advances in technology continue to shape the business world, we all tend to prioritize infrastructure improvements that control costs, increase efficiency, and help us to remain competitive. It is imperative that we incorporate document lifecycle management into this vision. By embracing workflow and electronic document management, we position ourselves for the future and get the best of all that this technology has to offer.

Optical Image Technology offers a complete line of document management, records management, and workflow software. To learn more about our solutions, please contact us (http://www.docfinity.com) at 814.238.0038 or email info@docfinity.com.

 

©2007 Optical Image Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. DocFinity, IntraVIEWER, and XML FormFLOW are trademarks or registered trademarks of Optical Image Technology, Inc.