There’s no escaping that our world is filled with endless amounts of paper. Documents, reports, invoices, confidential files…the list goes on. Perhaps these records are stored in your office, or perhaps in an off-site storage facility, where they are handled by a records storage company in a secure warehouse. Whatever the case may be, there is universal agreement among business professionals that proper records storage and management is of utmost importance for the small business today.
This world of records storage is a vastly changing one. What was once a simple matter of files, boxes and a spacious warehouse is now much more involved than ever. Recent government policies and regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, FACTA and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act have changed the records storage industry for the better, making it safer and more secure for businesses of all sizes. This change evolved the industry, making it as complex as ever before.
The evolution of records storage continued with the increase in technology and the dawn of the digital era. From the moment information was first stored on a hard drive or when email started to become commonplace, the records storage industry started to take an interest in all things digital. In 2007, we live in an overwhelmingly digital and media-saturated business environment. It used to be a no-brainer that all your company’s records were on a hard copy piece of paper or maybe on microfilm at best. This is no longer the case. Taking care of confidential and secure data means managing both the hard copy and digital sides of the records storage spectrum. Think of it as “e-storage” – where the seemingly endless data has no bounds. The new technology of document imaging, email archiving and data recovery has helped to create a sort of virtual warehouse for your company’s data.
Document imaging is becoming an increasingly viable option for organizations who wish to convert most – if not all – of their documents to digital form. Instead of the documents being out of sight and sometimes hard to access, the digital version is accessible at the few clicks of a mouse. Of course, the data is backed up on a third-party server to ensure maximum protection. This storage option does not contradict traditional paper storage. Rather, it complements it by adding the extra assurance that both a hard copy and a digital copy are readily accessible. In addition, files can be searched by keywords, sentences, and content – making it easier to find that particular document with certain phrases or words. The records management world has adapted well to this trend, and is increasingly offering this option to businesses wishing to go digital with their records.
Another hot trend in the records storage industry is email retention, archiving, and recovery. Email is such a necessary and important aspect of any business, yet is sometimes hard to manage or control. You know how it goes: there are some emails that you just have to hang on to, while others you hit delete right away. With the increasingly legal nature of any and all business communication, email has become important data, almost overshadowing the traditional office memos and reports. Email messages are now routinely used for evidential and litigation purposes. In a recent survey done by Forrester Consulting in
This has undoubtedly happened to all of us at least once: an important file is accidentally deleted, along with the dreaded recycle bin being emptied as a matter of habit. That file is long gone, right? Not really. Unless your hard drive is formatted three times and swept clean by a certified professional, the file is still available for retrieval. Before the advent of computers, if you shredded that important document, you weren’t going to get it back unless a copy had been made. But with data recovery, seemingly deleted files can be routinely retrieved and recovered.
The advances in the records storage industry have opened the door to a wide realm of possibilities that help ensure privacy, security and peace of mind for the small business. This change is certainly not ending anytime soon. The number of business records created and distributed by email continues to grow as the size of messages and attachments increases. Just as storage once meant physical files and boxes and now includes computers and digital data, the future will bring much greater change. In a few years, maybe we’ll be talking about the storage of each person’s medical records on individual microchips. Things have come a long way from records in a box.
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© 2007 Business Records Management |
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