Opportunities in Records Storage For Self-Storage Facilities

Posted on Apr 15, 2010 in Records Management News

Wednes­day, April 14, 2010 by leene

Records stor­age and man­age­ment is becom­ing a very pop­u­lar ancil­lary ser­vice in the Self Stor­age Busi­ness. Many oper­a­tors are dis­cov­er­ing the ben­e­fit to their exist­ing busi­ness of adding Records Man­age­ment. Although not a new con­cept, it is grow­ing in pop­u­lar­ity as our indus­try looks to draw a broader cus­tomer base and gen­er­ate addi­tional rev­enue streams, thereby, low­er­ing over­all risk.

For those of us already in the Stor­age Busi­ness, we already have two key ingre­di­ents for adding Records Man­age­ment — an estab­lished base of cus­tomers who are poten­tial can­di­dates for Records Man­age­ment, and an exist­ing facil­ity. If our cus­tomers are sat­is­fied with our cur­rent level of ser­vice for their stor­age needs, then it is likely that they will at least con­sider us for their Records Stor­age Needs. With min­i­mal time and cap­i­tal invest­ment, you can pro­vide yet another ser­vice in an effort to becom­ing a one stop stor­age provider.

Some high pro­file cases have been in the press in recent years with regard to con­fi­den­tial client records being mis­han­dled, and in some cases, thrown in pub­lic dump­sters. This has thrust the records man­age­ment busi­ness into the spot­light. Fur­ther­more, with the recent pass­ing of the HIPAA Guide­lines, many com­pa­nies are required to keep con­fi­den­tial client’s records in a secure place for up to 7 years. It’s no won­der Records Man­age­ment has become a fast grow­ing and highly prof­itable business.

One of the rea­sons it has become so prof­itable is due to the very nature of the real estate being used. If a Doc­tor or Lawyer’s office is stor­ing boxes and boxes, or sev­eral cab­i­nets full of records in their Class A Office Space, it can be pretty costly. So can you think of a less costly alter­na­tive loca­tion to store these records? Yeah, our facil­i­ties! In addi­tion, a Records Stor­age Cen­ter with proper soft­ware and track­ing mech­a­nisms can man­age the doc­u­ments with a greater degree of accu­racy than the cur­rent office staff.

So what’s the ben­e­fit to us? Records man­age­ment is per­pet­ual. Once a Records Client moves in, the account, and their space require­ments, con­tinue to grow. Most indus­try sta­tis­tics show that the aver­age Records Man­age­ment account grows at a rate of approx­i­mately 10–12 % per year.

Another ben­e­fit is the fact that the cus­tomers are typ­i­cally very loyal in nature, with­out much move­ment from one Records Man­age­ment Com­pany to another. As long as the ser­vice level is there, and there are no mis­takes or mis­han­dling of con­fi­den­tial records, it’s unlikely the client will move to another ven­dor. And the has­sle for the client to switch ven­dors means a costly move, a dis­rup­tion in ser­vice, and pos­si­bly incur­ring ter­mi­na­tion fees.

Sound good Scott, but what about the lia­bil­ity? Since the busi­ness is now run with some pretty high tech soft­ware, it’s a fairly sim­ple busi­ness with min­i­mal lia­bil­ity. Oper­a­tors are pro­tected by using a stan­dard indus­try agree­ment, which keeps finan­cial expo­sure in check. And one more ben­e­fit is that the Records Man­age­ment busi­ness can be sold sep­a­rately from the facil­ity if you choose. One of my asso­ciates who planned to sell his facil­ity and Records Stor­age Busi­ness found that he had more to gain by sell­ing the two independently.

A true Records Man­age­ment busi­ness uti­lizes soft­ware that allows the oper­a­tor to con­fi­dently han­dle the customer’s records in a safe and pro­fes­sional man­ner. The soft­ware per­forms such func­tions such as let­ting the oper­a­tor know when it is per­mis­si­ble to delete records or move them to archives, whether elec­tron­i­cally or phys­i­cally. The soft­ware is truly the brains of the busi­ness. It pro­vides the bar­cod­ing and track­ing of the data, invoic­ing, and pro­vid­ing inter­net access for wire­less scan­ning. It is also cus­tomiz­able and scal­able to meet each indi­vid­ual owner’s needs.

So if you’re look­ing for yet another profit cen­ter to boost the over­all NOI of your facil­ity, Records Stor­age should be on your radar. Check out the com­pe­ti­tion in your area to see how it mea­sures up and do a lit­tle home­work to uncover the hid­den oppor­tu­ni­ties in your market.

http://storageunits.blogspot.com/2010/04/opportunities-in-records-storage-for.html

Com­pli­ments of File­Man Research