2009 Document Management Study

Posted on Sep 18, 2009 in Records Management News

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS138423+17-Sep-2009+BW20090917

Research and Mar­kets: 2009 Doc­u­ment Man­age­ment Study The Need for Quick Access to Com­plete and Exten­sive Data Sets Con­tin­ues To Grow

DUBLIN–(Business Wire)– Research and Markets(http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/906a01/2009_document_mana) has announced the addi­tion of the “2009 Doc­u­ment Man­age­ment Study” report to their offering.

This is the third major sur­vey of doc­u­ment pro­cess­ing pro­fes­sion­als since the year 2000. Many trends we saw or fore­cast from the pre­vi­ous two stud­ies have come to fruition. The growth of image tech­nol­ogy has been sig­nif­i­cant and is now in place in vir­tu­ally every doc­u­ment han­dling process imag­in­able. The automa­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties have increased sub­stan­tially and con­tinue to be enhanced as firms look to drive effi­ciency and qual­ity through­out their operations.

Although many processes have matured, the quest for addi­tional uses and ser­vices never seems to end. We con­tinue to evolve from data entry to data cap­ture, with data min­ing uti­lized more and more in a vari­ety of appli­ca­tions. This is in addi­tion to front end auto clas­si­fi­ca­tion, where doc­u­ments can enter the sys­tem inter­min­gled, and soft­ware logic sorts and routes them into dif­fer­ent processing/handling streams. Even tra­di­tional hard­ware ven­dors are focus­ing more on the entire solu­tion set being deliv­ered, as well as enter­ing into actual pro­cess­ing envi­ron­ments with BPO (busi­ness process out­sourc­ing) operations.

As noted in pre­vi­ous stud­ies, com­pli­ance require­ments due to Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA, as well as recent highly pub­li­cized fraud­u­lent and risky ven­tures, have increased the need for secure imag­ing and data gathering/storage sys­tems. The need for quick access to com­plete and exten­sive data sets con­tin­ues to grow.

Study Objec­tives:

This par­tic­u­lar study was mir­rored after the first two, and is intended to pro­vide par­tic­i­pants com­par­a­tive infor­ma­tion cov­er­ing doc­u­ment prep, doc­u­ment imag­ing, recog­ni­tion and key entry, work­flow, archival, retrieval and reten­tion, dis­as­ter recov­ery, and out­sourc­ing and off-shore capa­bil­ity. It may also be uti­lized by a vari­ety of ven­dors to under­stand the var­i­ous types of work being han­dled, vol­ume lev­els, and the range of sophis­ti­ca­tion that exists in the mar­ket­place. The only caveat in draw­ing direct cor­re­la­tions from study to study is the fact that the respon­dents to each sur­vey are not exactly the same.

We were able to gen­er­ate a large num­ber of respon­dents (309), in addi­tion to the user com­mu­ni­ties of our major spon­sors. Nearly half of these respon­dents com­pleted the entire sur­vey. The ver­ti­cal mar­kets rep­re­sented, as well as the range of vol­ume and doc­u­ment types cap­tured is extensive.

Trends and Outlook:

Although cap­ture tech­nol­ogy and automa­tion tech­niques con­tinue to expand, our user base feels the need to uti­lize many of these tools to a greater degree. Aging sys­tems also require upgrades and cap­i­tal expen­di­tures to sim­ply meet mar­ket, com­pli­ance and com­pet­i­tive posi­tions. The real­ity, though, is that inter­nal com­pe­ti­tion for tech­nol­ogy resources and cap­i­tal dol­lars exists in most firms. If the doc­u­ment work­flow in ques­tion is not a key com­po­nent of an over­all firm’s main lines of busi­ness, it does not always get the devel­op­ment dol­lars needed, regard­less of the effi­cien­cies that could be gained. This makes it imper­a­tive that strong solid busi­ness cases are devel­oped, and is an area that ven­dors can pro­vide sig­nif­i­cant assistance.

Major ven­dors con­tinue to bring cap­ture and con­tent man­age­ment tools to the table. This is evi­denced by the sur­vey responses to the use of sys­tems like Microsoft Share­Point, which appear to be expe­ri­enc­ing enterprise-wide accep­tance in more and more firms. We may see more and more over­all solu­tions being intro­duced in the work­place, which will bridge data con­tent across var­i­ous lines of busi­ness and dis­ci­plines within firms, includ­ing sales, prod­uct devel­op­ment, mar­ket­ing, billing, accounts receiv­ables, com­pli­ance, etc.

Merg­ers and Acquisitions:

This is an area that has shown sig­nif­i­cant move­ment since our last sur­vey and does not appear to be slow­ing down any­time soon. Whether it is on the ven­dor side or the indus­try ver­ti­cals they sup­port, con­sol­i­da­tion will con­tinue. The obvi­ous dri­ver is cost reduc­tion, but increased ser­vice level offer­ings, and lever­ag­ing the global nature of most indus­tries is also preva­lent. More and more for­eign firms are invest­ing in the U.S., while Amer­i­can firms con­tinue to look for over­seas oppor­tu­ni­ties. The real­ity of all this con­sol­i­da­tion should be enhanced prod­uct deliv­ery and capa­bil­ity, as well as a grow­ing appetite for work­flow solu­tions and/or BPO (busi­ness process out­sourc­ing) oppor­tu­ni­ties. Cost/benefit analy­ses will drive solu­tions more than ever before, and will be more pro­nounced in these times of eco­nomic uncer­tainty. Merg­ers such as EMC and Cap­tiva, and Kodak with Bell and How­ell, appear to have resulted in stronger com­bined enti­ties, but the over­all impact to end users is still not cer­tain. Are the prod­uct offer­ings much stronger, ser­vice lev­els much higher, and price points more com­pet­i­tive to the end users? These will be the ques­tions to answer for all of the pre­vi­ous merger activ­i­ties, as well as those that will surely occur in the near future.

Com­pli­ance:

Reg­u­la­tory com­pli­ance, sim­i­lar to Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA, will increase. The preva­lent view that lack of over­sight con­tributed to recent mar­ket declines, and highly vis­i­ble fraud­u­lent oper­a­tions have been allowed to exist unabated, will result in fur­ther over­sight. Although much of this may be viewed as pos­i­tive steps, vir­tu­ally every indus­try will be affected and required to strengthen their risk con­trols is one form or another. Sys­tem and solu­tion providers, as well as users, will both need to stay abreast of the reg­u­la­tory envi­ron­ment and be in a posi­tion to react to what­ever changes lie ahead.

In addi­tion, the whole topic of lit­i­ga­tion pre­pared­ness has sur­faced and resulted in numer­ous eDis­cov­ery solu­tions enter­ing the mar­ket­place. Regard­less if a firm’s objec­tive is to be pre­pared for poten­tial lit­i­ga­tion or sim­ply to pro­vide effi­cient client ser­vices, any sys­tem solu­tion that is put in place needs to have a robust and man­age­able archive retrieval mech­a­nism. Users need to assess risks with their legal coun­sel and deter­mine their readi­ness to pull together infor­ma­tion and records in quick order. Whether firms call them “eDis­cov­ery” solu­tions or not, a strat­egy for access­ing data is imper­a­tive and can­not sim­ply be a reac­tive approach as sit­u­a­tions arise.

Need for Education:

The cur­rent eco­nomic land­scape high­lights the need to stay informed about tech­nol­ogy advance­ments. Often times, knee jerk reac­tions result in bud­get cuts around edu­ca­tion, train­ing, and mar­ket research. The real­ity, though, is that cost effi­cien­cies and rev­enue growth are para­mount, and enhanc­ing the knowl­edge base of a firm’s employ­ees is the only way for them to suc­ceed. Short term pull backs on edu­ca­tional oppor­tu­ni­ties end up neg­a­tively impact­ing firm’s abil­i­ties to grow and pros­per. The con­fer­ences, case stud­ies, webi­nars, white papers and research stud­ies are exactly what firms need, espe­cially in today’s com­pet­i­tive marketplace.

Key Top­ics Covered:

* Exec­u­tive Sum­mary * List of Fig­ures * Methodology/Study Demo­graph­ics * Doc­u­ment Types Processed * Doc­u­ment Prepa­ra­tion Meth­ods * Scan­ner Sta­tis­tics * Imag­ing Pro­duc­tion Rates * Dis­trib­uted Cap­ture * Cap­ture Soft­ware * Auto­mated Recog­ni­tion Usage * Key-entry Pro­duc­tion Rates * Ver­i­fy­ing Data Accu­racy * Image Qual­ity Check­ing * Image Repos­i­to­ries * Back-end Data­bases * Reten­tion * Off­shore Pro­cess­ing * Dis­as­ter Recov­ery Plans * Microsoft Share­Point Uti­liza­tion * Conclusions

List of Appendixes

* Appen­dix 1: Types of Doc­u­ments Being Processed * Appen­dix 2: Glos­sary of Terms Used * Appen­dix 3: Entire 2009 Doc­u­ment Man­age­ment Study Ques­tion­naire * Appen­dix 4: About the Sponsors

List of Figures:

* Fig­ure 1: Respon­dents’ Ver­ti­cal Mar­kets * Fig­ure 2: Respon­dents’ Posi­tion Titles * Fig­ure 3: Num­ber of Doc­u­ments Processed Per Day * Fig­ure 4: Types of Forms Processed * Fig­ure 5: Tech­nol­ogy and Pro­ce­dures Used for Pre-Sorting * Fig­ure 6: Num­ber of Doc­u­ment Prepa­ra­tion Meth­ods Used * Fig­ure 7: Total Scan­ners Used by Scan Speed * Fig­ure 8: Per­cent­age of Respon­dents Using Scan­ners (by Scan Speed) * Fig­ure 9: Per­cent­age of Users by Scan­ner Man­u­fac­turer * Fig­ure 10: Scan­ner Sat­is­fac­tion Rates * Fig­ure 11: Imag­ing Pro­duc­tion Rates * Fig­ure 12: Dis­trib­uted Scan­ning Capa­bil­ity (All) * Fig­ure 13: Dis­trib­uted Scan­ning (Large Vol­ume Proces­sors) * Fig­ure 14: Total Per­cent­age Using Iden­ti­fi­able Stan­dard Cap­ture Soft­ware * Fig­ure 15: Cap­ture Soft­ware Usage (by Provider) * Fig­ure 16: Cap­ture Soft­ware Sat­is­fac­tion Rates * Fig­ure 17: Recog­ni­tion Tech­nol­ogy Usage * Fig­ure 18: Num­ber of Recog­ni­tion Engines Used * Fig­ure 19: Key Entry Pro­duc­tion Rates * Fig­ure 20: Meth­ods of Ver­i­fy­ing Data Accu­racy * Fig­ure 21: Meth­ods of Con­trol­ling Image Qual­ity * Fig­ure 22: Image Repos­i­tory Sys­tems * Fig­ure 23: Back-end Data­bases * Fig­ure 24: Source Doc­u­ment Han­dling (Post-Process) * Fig­ure 25: Doc­u­ment Reten­tion Poli­cies in Place * Fig­ure 26: Soft­ware Dri­ven Doc­u­ment Reten­tion * Fig­ure 27: Func­tions Per­formed Off­shore * Fig­ure 28: Planned Future Change in Off­shore Vol­umes * Fig­ure 29: Is an American-owned Com­pany Impor­tant for Out­sourc­ing? * Fig­ure 30: Microsoft Share­Point Utilization

For more infor­ma­tion visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/906a01/2009_document_mana

Com­pli­ments of File­Man Research

To Sub­scribe to the File­Man Blog click here … http://www.carymcgovern.com/feed/

Best Per­sonal Regards,

Cary

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Iron Mountain Ranks No. 55 on 2009 InformationWeek 500

Posted on Sep 16, 2009 in Records Management News

Iron Moun­tain Ranks No. 55 on 2009 Infor­ma­tion­Week 500

Tues­day, Sep­tem­ber 15th, 2009 at 6:16 pm

Com­pany ini­tia­tive to opti­mize ser­vice qual­ity of record cen­ter oper­a­tions pro­pels it up the ranks of tech­nol­ogy innovators

MONARCH BEACH, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Iron Moun­tain Incor­po­rated (NYSE: IRM), the global leader in infor­ma­tion pro­tec­tion and stor­age ser­vices, today announced that it ranked No. 55 on the 2009 Infor­ma­tion­Week 500, a list­ing of the nation’s most inno­v­a­tive users of infor­ma­tion tech­nol­ogy. The rank­ing was revealed last night at a gala awards cer­e­mony at the Infor­ma­tion­Week 500 Conference.

“We are excited to be ranked in the Infor­ma­tion­Week 500 for the sev­enth con­sec­u­tive year, and it is espe­cially grat­i­fy­ing to have placed so high on this year’s pres­ti­gious list,” said William Brown, chief infor­ma­tion offi­cer at Iron Moun­tain. “We are com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing our cus­tomers with the most advanced solu­tions for infor­ma­tion pro­tec­tion and stor­age. This means tak­ing a hard look at our own inter­nal processes for oppor­tu­ni­ties to inno­vate and improve. Our Records Cen­ter Opti­miza­tion Pro­gram is a prime exam­ple. It has improved our tech­nol­ogy, our infra­struc­ture and, ulti­mately, our ser­vice to customers.”

Read more here: http://www.your-story.org/iron-mountain-ranks-no-55-on-2009-informationweek-500–31780/

To Sub­scribe to the File­Man Blog click here … http://www.carymcgovern.com/feed/

Best Per­sonal Regards,

 

Cary

_________________________________________

Cary F. McGovern

File­Man

File Man­agers, Inc.

250 Mako Nako Drive

Man­dev­ille, LA 70471

(985) 845‑0559 phone

(508) 749‑7777 efax

(504) 669‑0559 cell

877-FILEMAN toll free

fileman@fileman.com

www.fileman.com

File­Man Mis­sion State­ment:  Cre­ate and deliver world-class train­ing pro­grams, indus­try best busi­ness prac­tices, skills, tools, and resources for our clients while pro­vid­ing life­long learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties and per­sonal enrichment

 

This e-mail is intended solely for the per­son or entity to which it is addressed and may con­tain con­fi­den­tial and/or priv­i­leged infor­ma­tion. Any review, dis­sem­i­na­tion, copy­ing, print­ing or other use of this e-mail by per­sons or enti­ties other than the addressee is pro­hib­ited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please con­tact the sender imme­di­ately and delete the mate­r­ial from any computer.

 please think before you print!

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For all you conspiracy theorists … Moon Rocks actually are from the Arizona Desert

Posted on Sep 14, 2009 in Records Management News

Apollo moon rocks lost in space? No, lost on Earth

By TOBY STERLING (AP) – 23 hours ago

AMSTERDAM — Atten­tion, coun­tries of the world: Do you know where your moon rocks are?

The dis­cov­ery of a fake moon rock in the Nether­lands’ national museum should be a wake-up call for more than 130 coun­tries that received gifts of lunar rub­ble from both the Apollo 11 flight in 1969 and Apollo 17 three years later.

Nearly 270 rocks scooped up by U.S. astro­nauts were given to for­eign coun­tries by the Nixon admin­is­tra­tion. But accord­ing to experts and research by The Asso­ci­ated Press, the where­abouts of some of the small rocks are unknown.

“There is no doubt in my mind that many moon rocks are lost or stolen and now sit­ting in pri­vate col­lec­tions,” said Joseph Gutheinz, a Uni­ver­sity of Ari­zona instruc­tor and for­mer U.S. gov­ern­ment inves­ti­ga­tor who has made a project of track­ing down the lunar treasures.

The Rijksmu­seum, more noted as a repos­i­tory for 17th cen­tury Dutch paint­ings, announced last month it had had its plum-sized “moon” rock tested, only to dis­cover it was a piece of pet­ri­fied wood, pos­si­bly from Ari­zona. The museum said it inher­ited the rock from the estate of a for­mer prime minister.

Read more here: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jdyj-HDQIycVIGv_Fx8zW26t92AAD9AMHQHO0

To Sub­scribe to the File­Man Blog click here … http://www.carymcgovern.com/feed/

Best Per­sonal Regards,

Cary

Read More

A rare opportunity indeed for all CRC’s offering Imaging Services

Posted on Sep 13, 2009 in Records Management News

http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewarticle/articleid/3476078#

Dell To Make Elec­tronic Med­ical Records

By: Zacks Invest­ment Research   Sat­ur­day, Sep­tem­ber 12, 2009 3:58 PM

Dell Inc. (DELL­Stock Charts and Research Links: 16.6, 0.04) recently said it would ven­ture into the elec­tronic med­ical records sys­tem busi­ness, which is used by doc­tors and hos­pi­tals. The device helps in stor­ing med­ical records in a way that makes it easy to track the clin­i­cal his­tory of patients from any­where in the world with­out stor­ing hard copies.

We believe the time is ideal for com­pa­nies like Dell to enter this space as the fed­eral gov­ern­ment has granted around $19 bil­lion in incen­tives to med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers and hos­pi­tals. Elec­tronic record-keeping soft­ware has huge prospects as most doc­tors cur­rently use hard copies of med­ical records and the mar­ket is more or less reces­sion proof.

Only 10% of Amer­i­can health care providers have adopted a full fledged elec­tronic med­ical record sys­tem, so there is sub­stan­tial growth poten­tial in the seg­ment. Dell is plan­ning to com­bine its hard­ware with third-party soft­ware and pro­vide ser­vices such as need assess­ment, sys­tem con­fig­u­ra­tion, work­flow process draw­ing and pro­vid­ing train­ing and sup­port to med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers and hospitals.

Despite being a tech­ni­cal giant, Dell is likely to face stiff com­pe­ti­tion from big­ger play­ers like Google Inc. (GOOG­Stock Charts and Research Links: 472.14, 1.2) and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT­Stock Charts and Research Links: 24.86, –0.14). These com­pa­nies have already launched per­sonal health records stor­age sys­tems to help patients store their own health data.

Thus, while this is a good busi­ness oppor­tu­nity for Dell, it has to over­come many obsta­cles to be suc­cess­ful in the field. We believe health­care pro­fes­sion­als are increas­ingly adopt­ing the con­cept of a paper­less office and rec­og­niz­ing the ben­e­fits of cost effi­cient stor­age and greater acces­si­bil­ity of med­ical records.

Com­pli­ments of File­Man Research

To Sub­scribe to the File­Man Blog click here … http://www.carymcgovern.com/feed/

Best Per­sonal Regards,

 

Cary

_________________________________________

Cary F. McGovern

File­Man

File Man­agers, Inc.

250 Mako Nako Drive

Man­dev­ille, LA 70471

(985) 845‑0559 phone

(508) 749‑7777 efax

(504) 669‑0559 cell

877-FILEMAN toll free

fileman@fileman.com

www.fileman.com

File­Man Mis­sion State­ment:  Cre­ate and deliver world-class train­ing pro­grams, indus­try best busi­ness prac­tices, skills, tools, and resources for our clients while pro­vid­ing life­long learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties and per­sonal enrichment

 

This e-mail is intended solely for the per­son or entity to which it is addressed and may con­tain con­fi­den­tial and/or priv­i­leged infor­ma­tion. Any review, dis­sem­i­na­tion, copy­ing, print­ing or other use of this e-mail by per­sons or enti­ties other than the addressee is pro­hib­ited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please con­tact the sender imme­di­ately and delete the mate­r­ial from any computer.

 please think before you print!

—–Orig­i­nal Mes­sage—–
From: PRISM-listserver-owner@lists.prismintl.org [mailto:PRISM-listserver-owner@lists.prismintl.org] On Behalf Of Cary F. McGov­ern
Sent: Wednes­day, Sep­tem­ber 09, 2009 10:09 AM
To: PRISM-listserver@lists.prismintl.org
Sub­ject: Crown Records Man­age­ment Acquires Ath­ema Archiv­ing In South Africa

http://www.indiaprwire.com/pressrelease/financial-services/2009090933305.htm

Crown Records Man­age­ment, the world’s num­ber one pri­vate busi­ness infor­ma­tion stor­age com­pany, announced the acqui­si­tion of Ath­ema Archiv­ing, a South African records man­age­ment busi­ness based in Johan­nes­burg, South Africa.

With the acqui­si­tion of this com­pany and highly-developed scan­ning oper­a­tion in South Africa, Crown’s clients will enjoy a full spec­trum of ser­vices rang­ing from imag­ing, data extrac­tion, elec­tronic media stor­age, secure and con­fi­den­tial waste destruc­tion and tra­di­tional doc­u­ment stor­age services.

Estab­lished in 1983, Crown Records Man­age­ment cur­rently serves clients in 52 coun­tries and brings its vast global knowl­edge and high-technology solu­tions to the South African mar­ket­place. Inno­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies pro­vide clients with Web-based sys­tems to retrieve records in stor­age, gen­er­ate cus­tomized reports, and access invoices and billing infor­ma­tion. Off-site data stor­age and host­ing ser­vices enable clients to access elec­tronic files on a secure, Web-based browser.

Flamely Fourie, who was pre­vi­ously based in Dubai, UAE, in charge of Crown’s records man­age­ment divi­sion, will over­see Crown South Africa’s records busi­ness. Fourie said, “I am excited about the growth poten­tial. We will be focus­ing on addi­tional scan­ning busi­ness, as well as more media stor­age and cer­ti­fied destruc­tion services.”

Crown’s Record Man­age­ment in South Africa, head­quar­tered in Johan­nes­burg, oper­ates and serves 300 clients through­out Dur­ban, Cape Town and Port Elizabeth.

Philip Briton, Crown’s group vice pres­i­dent of Records Man­age­ment added, “This acqui­si­tion strength­ens our devel­op­ment pro­gram through­out the con­ti­nent. South Africa is cur­rently in the top five fastest grow­ing economies and Crown looks for­ward to serv­ing the needs of clients in the quickly grow­ing industry.”

To read more about Crown Records Man­age­ment in South Africa, please visit our Web site at www.crownrms.com/southafrica

- End -

Crown Records Man­age­ment is a divi­sion of the Crown World­wide Group which was estab­lished in 1965. In 1983, Crown real­ized there was a pro­found need for a com­pany to help man­age the explo­sion of phys­i­cal and elec­tronic busi­ness infor­ma­tion. Using its expe­ri­ence in secure stor­age, on-time deliv­ery and track­ing tech­nol­ogy, Crown began offer­ing tra­di­tional records man­age­ment ser­vices includ­ing stor­age, index­ing and destruc­tion of records.

As the company’s list of clients grew, the Crown Records Man­age­ment team expanded its range of ser­vices and tech­nolo­gies to meet its clients’ evolv­ing needs. Today, Crown serves large and small cor­po­ra­tions around the world, pro­vid­ing ser­vices rang­ing from stor­age of hard copies and elec­tronic busi­ness infor­ma­tion to scan­ning, imag­ing, data con­ver­sion, data host­ing, escrow and destruc­tion services.

Crown Records Man­age­ment man­ages more than 20,000,000 cubic feet of busi­ness records across 50 coun­tries, oper­at­ing from over 200 Man­age­ment Cen­ters. Crown has grown to become the num­ber one pri­vate com­pany in this field.

Com­pli­ments of File­Man Research To Sub­scribe to the File­Man Blog click here … http://www.carymcgovern.com/feed/

Best Per­sonal Regards,

 

Cary

_________________________________________

Cary F. McGovern

File­Man

File Man­agers, Inc.

250 Mako Nako Drive

Man­dev­ille, LA 70471

(985) 845‑0559 phone

(508) 749‑7777 efax

(504) 669‑0559 cell

877-FILEMAN toll free

fileman@fileman.com

www.fileman.com

File­Man Mis­sion State­ment:  Cre­ate and deliver world-class train­ing pro­grams, indus­try best busi­ness prac­tices, skills, tools, and resources for our clients while pro­vid­ing life­long learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties and per­sonal enrichment

 

This e-mail is intended solely for the per­son or entity to which it is addressed and may con­tain con­fi­den­tial and/or priv­i­leged infor­ma­tion. Any review, dis­sem­i­na­tion, copy­ing, print­ing or other use of this e-mail by per­sons or enti­ties other than the addressee is pro­hib­ited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please con­tact the sender imme­di­ately and delete the mate­r­ial from any computer.

 please think before you print!

—–Orig­i­nal Message—–

From: PRISM-listserver-owner@lists.prismintl.org [mailto:PRISM-listserver-owner@lists.prismintl.org] On Behalf Of Chris Pearson

Sent: Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 04, 2009 11:48 AM

To: PRISM-listserver@lists.prismintl.org

Sub­ject: RE: Back­ground checks

John,

 

We use Kroll also and I would rec­om­mend them – very thorough.

 

Chris Pear­son

Van­guard Archives

3900 S. Michi­gan Avenue

Chicago, IL 60653

773 268 6713

www.vanguardarchives.com

________________________________

From: PRISM-listserver-owner@lists.prismintl.org [mailto:PRISM-listserver-owner@lists.prismintl.org] On Behalf Of Chad Sorrell

Sent: Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 04, 2009 8:37 AM

To: PRISM-listserver@lists.prismintl.org

Sub­ject: RE: Back­ground checks

 

John,

 

We’ve used Kroll for a num­ber of years and been pleased with their ser­vice.  You can eas­ily cus­tomize the thor­ough­ness of the screen­ing to fit your needs. 

 

http://www.kroll.com/services/screening/background_investigation/

 

 

Chad Sor­rell

 

 

750 Moun­tain View Drive

Piney Flats, TN 37686

Phone:   423–391-0014

Fax:       423–391-0015

 

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—–Orig­i­nal Message—–

From: PRISM-listserver-owner@lists.prismintl.org [mailto:PRISM-listserver-owner@lists.prismintl.org] On Behalf Of John Corbitt

Sent: Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 04, 2009 8:26 AM

To: PRISM-listserver@lists.prismintl.org

Sub­ject: Back­ground checks

 

Mem­bers,

 

I’m won­der­ing if any of the mem­bers could rec­om­mend a ‘Back­ground Check’ ser­vice for new hires, that you are com­fort­able with and found them to be rea­son­ably priced?

 

Thanks

John

 

John Cor­bitt, President

NDX Archives & Next Day Xpress

5621 Old Fred­er­ick Rd.

Catonsville,  MD 21228

 

* 410–744-7255, ext 100  direct dial

* 410–744-5111  main line

7  410–747-5495  fax

Cell 410–241-1937

john@shipndx.com <mailto:john@shipndx.com>

www.ndxarchives.com <http://www.ndxarchives.com/>    www.shipndx.com <http://www.shipndx.com/> 

 

You are sub­scribed to the PRISM Inter­na­tional mem­ber­ship list­server for gen­eral dis­cus­sion. To unsub­scribe send an e-mail to staff@prismintl.org. To sub­scribe addi­tional employ­ees from a mem­ber com­pany send the name and e-mail address of the new sub­scriber to staff@prismintl.org.

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Is Your Company Clueless? A 10-Point Checklist for your Company’s Record Management IQ

Posted on Sep 11, 2009 in Records Management News

From AIIM: http://www.aiim.org/infonomics/clueless-about-records-management.aspx

What’s your company’s records man­age­ment IQ? Does your com­pany do any of these things? You may need some basic records man­age­ment training.

Here is a check­list to deter­mine if your com­pany needs basic records man­age­ment training

1). The com­pany does not have a cur­rent records reten­tion sched­ule. Please notice the word “cur­rent” in that sen­tence. Why stress that word? Too many times a com­pany says, yes, they have a records reten­tion sched­ule. Then I find out it was estab­lished years ago and has not been updated since. Many com­pa­nies believe that all they have to do is estab­lish a records reten­tion sched­ule, but fail to plan for the main­te­nance of the sched­ule. Laws and reg­u­la­tions change, busi­ness changes – the records reten­tion sched­ule must be updated to reflect those changes. Think of it this way… as we go through life we change our wills, our insur­ance cov­er­age, the way we invest to meet our chang­ing needs. A records reten­tion sched­ule must reflect the cur­rent laws, reg­u­la­tions, and busi­ness needs.

2). The com­pany places a freeze on the destruc­tion of any and all records when hit with lit­i­ga­tion. This occurs because com­pa­nies have no clue as to which records per­tain to the lit­i­ga­tion, so the safest thing to do is to freeze every­thing. In a good records man­age­ment pro­gram, records are kept for a rea­son … to record the trans­ac­tions of a com­pany. Records should always be described in detail using key words, phrases, and records codes which iden­tify the type and sub­ject of the record.

3). The company’s reten­tion period for all records is 7 years. (Or any other blan­ket “x” num­ber of years.) This is a holdover from the IRS – most peo­ple keep copies of their filed tax returns for 7 years. In fact, there are tens of thou­sands of Fed­eral and state laws and reg­u­la­tions regard­ing how long to keep spe­cific records. It is a cor­po­rate deci­sion to keep the num­ber of reten­tion peri­ods down to a real­is­tic few. The laws tell us how long to keep records at a min­i­mum, cor­po­ra­tions can decide to keep them longer. The require­ments are get­ting more com­plex each day, so cor­po­ra­tions are often opt­ing to estab­lish reten­tion “buck­ets”, thus low­er­ing the num­ber of reten­tion cat­e­gories. If a record is required to be held for 3 years, a com­pany may opt to put it in the 5-year reten­tion cat­e­gory and do away with a 3-year reten­tion bucket all together.

4) The company’s pol­icy is to keep records “per­ma­nently, for­ever, or indef­i­nitely.” This is a prob­lem on a cou­ple of levels.

* Keep­ing every­thing for long term is detri­men­tal to the smooth oper­a­tions of a com­pany. Regard­less of the media, more and more records are stored, mak­ing it more dif­fi­cult to find the infor­ma­tion you need quickly and effi­ciently. Stor­age is cheap, so often times, IT depart­ments just buy more stor­age and don’t go back to deter­mine what could actu­ally be purged. This adds cost, but more impor­tantly, it means that when­ever there is a search done, the search has to go through all the infor­ma­tion that is not needed to be retained, thereby slow­ing down the retrieval process. * How long is per­ma­nent? Can you quan­tify for­ever? Real­is­ti­cally, how long does the record really need to exist? In the man­u­fac­tur­ing arena, records must be retained on a prod­uct for the life of the prod­uct – plus a few more years. Even though this may be a very long time, the records reten­tion sched­ule should reflect the require­ment, not just say “per­ma­nent.” At pre-determined inter­vals, this record series should be reviewed to iden­tify if the prod­uct is still being used by con­sumers. The clock starts at the point at which it is deter­mined that the prod­uct is not being used. For instance in a med­ical device man­u­fac­tur­ing firm the require­ment on a series of records deal­ing with a prod­uct line might be life of prod­uct + 5 years (LOP+5). At the point where it is deter­mined that no units of this prod­uct are in use, the records need to be retained for five more years.

5) The com­pany thinks the reten­tion sched­ule only applies to paper records. Many com­pa­nies have a reten­tion sched­ule for paper records and a sep­a­rate reten­tion sched­ule for elec­tronic records. My approach is to keep things sim­ple. Use one reten­tion sched­ule for both. The media is only the vehi­cle on which infor­ma­tion is served to the user.

6) Each depart­ment is charged with devel­op­ing its own records reten­tion sched­ule and records man­age­ment pro­gram. This can spell dis­as­ter as you have each depart­ment retain­ing the same cat­e­gories of records for dif­fer­ent peri­ods and causes con­fu­sion within the com­pany. Be sure that the records man­age­ment pro­gram is man­aged by one office, with knowl­edge­able staff.

7) Employ­ees keep records “just in case.” The law doesn’t tell us to keep records “just in case.” For the most part, the laws con­cern­ing records reten­tion are very spe­cific and direct com­pa­nies to keep records for X amount of time at a min­i­mum. Obvi­ously, for busi­ness rea­sons, a com­pany can choose to keep records longer, but nowhere in reten­tion lan­guage is the reten­tion period “just in case.” Exec­u­tives are usu­ally the ones who want to use this lan­guage, per­haps because they just don’t want to deal with the reten­tion ques­tion. “Just in case” is not a reten­tion period.
The office of record is not iden­ti­fied. The office of record should always be iden­ti­fied on the reten­tion sched­ule. This helps other work­ers when going through their records to under­stand if they are the owner of the record or if some other depart­ment is. Addi­tion­ally, this leaves lit­tle, if any, doubt about who should be keep­ing what records.

9) There is no for­mal process for review­ing and approv­ing the destruc­tion of records. We per­form processes at work every day and give lit­tle thought to it, but to pro­tect the indi­vid­ual worker, as well as the com­pany, all processes should be doc­u­mented. This is no dif­fer­ent for records reten­tion review processes. Busi­nesses change, laws change, and events hap­pen that one area of the com­pany may not be priv­i­leged to. For exam­ple, say cus­tomer ser­vice had client records and many were sched­uled to be destroyed this year. Is it safe for the records to be auto­mat­i­cally destroyed? No. The depart­ment head and legal need to review the records slated for destruc­tion before they are destroyed to ensure there are no busi­ness or legal rea­sons why the records should be retained. As a records man­ager, I’m not going to nec­es­sar­ily know that. What should hap­pen is that the records should be placed on a destruc­tion hold, but that does not always occur.

10) There is a cur­rent records reten­tion sched­ule but employ­ees don’t know where to find it. A records reten­tion sched­ule is a pol­icy. One can­not expect employ­ees to fol­low the pol­icy unless they are 1) trained to it and 2) know where to find it to refer to it. Too many times, I go into a client’s office and ask for a copy of the cur­rent records reten­tion sched­ule and get mul­ti­ple (very dif­fer­ent) ver­sions of the doc­u­ment. No one really knows what the cur­rent ver­sion is, let alone how to find it.

If any of the above sit­u­a­tions sounds like your com­pany, you need Records Man­age­ment 101. No need to go into detail, the goal is not to make a records man­ager out of every employee, but they should know the basics.

How does this fit into ECM? ECM is only as good as the way in which infor­ma­tion is man­aged. Com­pa­nies con­stantly throw tech­nol­ogy at a prob­lem, adding this sys­tem or that sys­tem to solve busi­ness issues. They put infor­ma­tion in these sys­tems with­out thought about how and when to delete infor­ma­tion. They com­pound the prob­lem this way. Get a han­dle on what infor­ma­tion you have, where it belongs (what sys­tem), who “owns” it and when to legally get rid of it. Have a strat­egy and processes — we man­age finance assets and human resource assets, but we have trou­ble under­stand­ing that it is just as impor­tant to man­age our infor­ma­tion assets. Infor­ma­tion is the back­bone of any com­pany – with­out infor­ma­tion, there is no company.

In these monthly columns, I will be explor­ing spe­cific infor­ma­tion man­age­ment com­pli­ance (IMC) con­sid­er­a­tions and issues as they per­tain to ECM from the trenches and view­point of a well sea­soned end-user. If you have par­tic­u­lar top­ics you would like to have dis­cussed in this col­umn, please con­tact me at tk.train@imceds.com.

TK Train is a board mem­ber with AIIM. I

f you do need RM 101, take a look at AIIM’s Elec­tronic Records Man­age­ment cer­tifi­cate pro­gram . Also, for a good overview of how team­work is crit­i­cal to the suc­cess of an ERM pro­gram, down­load (it’s free) the poster, Win­ning with Elec­tronic Records Management.

Com­pli­ments of File­Man Research: To Sub­scribe to the File­Man Blog click here … http://www.carymcgovern.com/feed/

Best Per­sonal Regards,

Cary

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