Records Management
Are your records exposed to the elements in a warehouse with a leaky roof? Or perhaps living a perpetual life of luxury in a pristine air controlled (expensive) storage facility?
Records management is an imperative function for all organizations. Saving documents beyond required retention periods mean additional storage costs for the organizations and can increase litigation cost and risk (more information to sort for disclosure). Not keeping documents long enough can subject you to regulatory fines and repercussions that can jeopardize your ability to defend against potential lawsuits.
Other considerations are how to store documents and where to place them so they are reasonably protected. Accounting records, magentic tapes for computer backup and the Corporate Art collections all require different levels of protection which can come at considerable cost. Storing records needlessly and poor archiving practices also leads to increased cost. An effective record management process balances these factors to minimize risk and cost.
Initiating a records management program is a daunting and time consuming process yet the benefits of doing this can pay for itself. Often records of no value are archived while critical records remain unprotected. Almost as destructive - archiving material with no effective indexing, making retrieval difficult/impossible.