Crown Records Management … Insights From 25 Years of Records Management

Posted on Aug 16, 2010 in Records Management News

15.08.2010 | Author: Michael Mclaren

Since 1983, Crown Records Man­age­ment has been serv­ing the needs of Records Man­age­ment pro­fes­sion­als around the world. Over the years, the records man­age­ment indus­try has expe­ri­enced the effects of exter­nal influ­ences. From new tech­nolo­gies, an abun­dance of reg­u­la­tions, the emer­gence of data pri­vacy issues, a shrink­ing world and most recently, envi­ron­men­tal causes, the indus­try has con­tin­ued to adapt and adjust.

The Rise of Records Reg­u­la­tions
While gov­ern­ment, legal and health­care enti­ties have tra­di­tion­ally main­tained a dis­ci­plined approached to records man­age­ment, most other indus­tries were less reg­i­mented. In 2001, the Enron/Anderson scan­dal trig­gered increased inter­est among cor­po­ra­tions to take records man­age­ment more seri­ously. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 estab­lished new and enhanced stan­dards for U.S. com­pa­nies to strengthen cor­po­rate account­ing con­trols and estab­lished crim­i­nal penal­ties for manip­u­la­tion, destruc­tion or alter­ation of finan­cial records—all of which required more stan­dard­iza­tion of records man­age­ment prac­tices within an organization.

With the media spot­light on the indus­try, records man­age­ment expe­ri­enced an abrupt change. Man­ag­ing infor­ma­tion shifted from what many per­ceived to be a very low admin­is­tra­tive task to a crit­i­cal func­tion affect­ing the entire staff with account­abil­ity des­ig­nated to the most senior lev­els of the orga­ni­za­tion. The need to access busi­ness infor­ma­tion in real-time grew in line with the empha­sis on reg­u­la­tion. Busi­nesses looked to infor­ma­tion man­age­ment sup­pli­ers like Crown Records Man­age­ment for con­sul­tancy ser­vices, reten­tion pol­icy coun­sel­ing, off­site stor­age solu­tions, escrow ser­vices and destruc­tion policies.

Data Pri­vacy…
The increased use of the Inter­net and the result­ing preva­lence of iden­tity theft resulted in the Data Pri­vacy Act (DPA) of 1998, with the Euro­pean Union act­ing on the need for enforce­able data pri­vacy laws. A set of rules were cre­ated to gov­ern how per­son­ally iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion is stored and used, and was adapted in many other coun­tries, includ­ing the United States. This option cre­ated a “Safe Har­bor” for those U.S. orga­ni­za­tions that want to exchange data with E.U. coun­tries freely so that any orga­ni­za­tion that was cer­ti­fied as hav­ing com­plied with the U.S. Depart­ment of Commerce’s pro­vi­sions of data pri­vacy were deemed to have Safe Har­bor with the E.U. data pri­vacy directive.

When an orga­ni­za­tion vol­un­tar­ily cer­ti­fies itself to Safe Har­bor, it agreed to fol­low the pro­vi­sions of infor­ma­tion han­dling and held respon­si­ble for adher­ing to those prin­ci­ples. Data Pri­vacy also became an issue of inter­est for records man­age­ment pro­fes­sion­als. Their role had tra­di­tion­ally been pri­mar­ily to pro­tect an organization’s records but the grow­ing need to ensure that individual’s infor­ma­tion was main­tained and destroyed appro­pri­ately, brought a greater focus to reten­tion sched­ules and destruc­tion poli­cies.
In 2004, as a result of these changes, Crown became a mem­ber of Safe Har­bor. The staff mem­bers of the Crown World­wide Group, includ­ing Crown Records Man­age­ment, man­age con­fi­den­tially accord­ing to the cus­tomers’ request and in accor­dance with the rules spec­i­fied by Safe Harbor.

A Global Econ­omy Emerges…
The global econ­omy has been grow­ing at a rapid pace, open­ing up for­eign invest­ments and dou­ble digit growth in devel­op­ing mar­kets around the world. India and China led the way, fol­lowed by the flour­ish­ing mar­kets of Brazil, Rus­sia and Viet­nam. The Mid­dle East is thriv­ing and for­eign direct invest­ment is hav­ing a direct impact on the economies of Africa. All of this growth has shifted the way orga­ni­za­tions are look­ing at how they man­age their busi­ness information.

The invest­ment records man­age­ment pro­fes­sion­als are mak­ing in stan­dard­ized processes in their Amer­i­can, Euro­pean or Asian Head­quar­ters are being rolled out into the devel­op­ing coun­tries. Sim­i­lar to many other indus­tries, they are see­ing the value in devel­op­ing global and regional processes and rely­ing on global and regional records man­age­ment providers to help them edu­cate and imple­ment their poli­cies around the world. Crown has been lever­ag­ing its already estab­lished net­work to meet the needs of its global clients, and is cur­rently eval­u­at­ing the value of reward and loy­alty programs.

The Myth of the Paper­less Office…
No one knows the exact ori­gin of the term “paper­less office” but it was recorded in a copy of the U.S. mag­a­zine Busi­ness Week in 1975–32 years ago. At that time it was pre­dicted that the advent of the com­puter would mean that paper would no longer be used in busi­ness. That pre­dic­tion has cer­tainly not come true. Peo­ple still want to print out–quickly, flaw­lessly and in vibrant color. In a world of mul­ti­ple ven­dors with incom­pat­i­ble sys­tems and an influx of new reg­u­la­tory require­ments, hard copies are the reality.

In line with strin­gent reg­u­la­tory require­ments, hav­ing real-time access to the infor­ma­tion that’s embed­ded in hard copies is imper­a­tive. Records man­age­ment pro­fes­sion­als became aware that despite the hype, they would have to find solu­tions to trans­form their hard copies into elec­tronic data. Com­pa­nies like Crown devel­oped solu­tions using new tech­nolo­gies such as scan­ning, imag­ing, data con­ver­sion and data host­ing, to help their clients man­age, access, pro­tect and archive both their hard copies and their elec­tronic busi­ness information.

Respond­ing to A Respon­si­ble World…
Today, the world is eagerly respond­ing to a global call for con­ser­va­tion. As part of its con­tri­bu­tion towards a cleaner, greener envi­ron­ment and reduc­ing its car­bon foot­print, Crown Records Man­age­ment has taken deliv­ery of its first ever elec­tric vehi­cle. The design has been adapted mechan­i­cally to run using bat­tery power only, lend­ing itself to zero car­bon emis­sions, noise and exhaust pol­lu­tion, and all its com­po­nents can be recy­cled. Crown has also started using motor­cy­cles to deliver smaller records to its clients, which also helps reduce its car­bon emissions.

Many records man­age­ment providers are seek­ing the ISO 14000 envi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment stan­dards cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. The cer­ti­fi­ca­tion exists to help orga­ni­za­tions min­i­mize how their oper­a­tions neg­a­tively affect the envi­ron­ment, cause adverse changes to air, water, or land and also to com­ply with local laws and reg­u­la­tions. Crown’s larger offices have already earned this des­ig­na­tion and addi­tional offices are in the process.
As all of these changes have occurred in the indus­try, Crown has main­tained its com­mit­ment to deliv­er­ing per­sonal cus­tomer ser­vice while deliv­er­ing global, regional and local solu­tions. Crown has adapted and con­tin­ues to expand its ser­vices, enhance its cus­tomized tech­nolo­gies and its global pres­ence. Crown intends to be where its clients need them to be, serv­ing both large and small cor­po­ra­tions around the world. Crown pro­vides all the tra­di­tional ser­vices such as stor­age of hard copies and elec­tronic infor­ma­tion, scan­ning, imag­ing, data con­ver­sion, data host­ing, escrow and destruc­tion ser­vices but equally impor­tant, pro­vides con­sul­ta­tive ser­vices and reten­tion pol­icy coun­sel­ing to help its clients adapt to an ever chang­ing world.

Today, Crown Records Man­age­ment man­ages busi­ness records across 50 coun­tries, oper­at­ing from over 200 Man­age­ment Cen­ters. Hav­ing grown to become the num­ber one pri­vate com­pany in this field, Crown man­ages over 20 mil­lion cubic feet of car­tons. Visit Crown’s Web site at http://www.crownrms.com.

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