Blogs

Electronic Records Cleanup Pt. 1: Why Clean Up Your Electronic Files When Storage is Cheap?

Tina Baker previews her AIIM 2013 roundtable session. Enjoy, and follow #AIIM nd @AIIMcon on Twitter. Register today, space is limited and going fast

Tina Teree Baker

President, CEO, and founder

Cadence Group

Managing Electronic File Cleanup (pre-ECM/EDRM)

At AIIM 2013, I will be moderating a roundtable discussion on how to clean up electronic records (on March 21st at 1:30pm – my birthday no less!). This is a challenge for every organization. Join us as we share strategies to make cleaning up electronic files a manageable task. We’ll also discuss tools that will make this task easier (and less costly) through automation to facilitate compliance and deliver audible destruction.

Despite a decrease in the cost of electronic data storage, other costs associated with electronic information continue to rise. In most organizations - global to mid-sized, corporate to federal – unstructured data is not effectively managed.  From years of obsolete and duplicative documents on shared drives, to a variety of backups, the unnecessary cost of storage, threat of data breach, and risk of e-Discovery are real. As piles of electronically stored data continue to grow, compliance and security become increasingly difficult to manage. Information becomes more and more difficult to effectively retrieve.

The complexity – and volume – of this task can initially seem overwhelming. Don’t sweep it under the rug. If you think clean-up is expensive, wait until you go through the ediscovery process.

Here’s the first thing you need to do:

Review your organization’s Records Retention Schedule to make sure the categories address the information you store electronically (as well as hardcopy) and that it is compliant with current laws and regulations.

To learn more about next steps and tools that help automate information cleanup, follow our blog at www.cadence-group.com/blog