Records Management Blog | Practical Records Management

Imagine, if you will, a company with a perfect business model. For the sake of being specific, let's imagine a company that makes those little paper umbrellas that are served in tropically-themed drinks. In addition to making the best possible companion for a poolside cocktail, this company has found the best leadership, has the most sound and profitable business plan, and has its coffers full of capital from willing and wealthy paper-umbrella-enthusiast investors. It has a large clientele already in place in the form of bars and resorts.

It owns two warehouses on both coasts, and has worked out wildly lucrative deals with their suppliers. They have a successful e-commerce platform, are scoring number one in web searches related to paper drink umbrellas, receiving well over a million hits per year. Their employees are satisfied and happy with their pay and their pension, and the company is about to go public and expand to the competitive and profitable world of the international paper-umbrella business. Investors could not be happier. Jim Cramer (the Mad Money guy) is yelling at you at the top of his lungs through the TV set, telling you to Buy, Buy, Buy! Nothing could possibly be going any better for this company.

Except for one little thing: the founder of the company was strangely averse to filing and hanging on to documents. As a quick fix, he found an empty room on the third floor of the office, painted the walls black, and simply dumped all of the company's records in the room. Whenever a record was created, it was unceremoniously dumped into this room, never to be seen again. When it became impossible to access the room from normal means, the founder had a system of tubes installed so that employees could dump their records into the room without needing to open the door.
So, as the company expanded, the room kept filling up. Every time an invoice was created to order products from a supplier, it was dumped in the room. Every time a contract was signed or drawn up, the copies were thrown down the tubes. Every time the customer made a purchase from the company's website, the receipt was sent down to the room, never again to see the light of day.

Still, this minor bit of oversight couldn't hurt the company, right? The fundamentals and the statistics were simply too sound. It could afford to look the other way on such a petty issue as records management and still maintain its expansive success.
Unfortunately, in spite of all of the fantastic potential, there are at least five ways that this business can encounter problems because of their laissez faire approach to records management. Let's take a look:

1. The business can be the subject of a government audit: There are many laws and statutes that regulate what types of records an organization or business must keep. If a business fails to meet these standards, the resulting fees and penalties can undermine the value of favorable earnings statements.

2. The company's headquarters can become inaccessible: Due to a malfunction in the paper-umbrella manufacturing process, the offices may become inaccessible for weeks or months at a time. Because all of the records of the company were stashed on the floor of this room, and there were no tracking systems in place, the company isn't able to reconcile its debts or track its customers or shipments, resulting in decreased efficiency and poor customer service.

3. The business can be sued: If an angry customer who has nearly choked to death on a paper umbrella sues this company, and this company cannot produce proper evidence of waivers, disclaimers, company policy notices and proof of insurance, the company may lose a major lawsuit and be forced to pay settlements that they otherwise may have avoided.

4. The business can waste money buying new space for the files: If the first file room fills up, the business will need to rent a second, and a third, and a fourth, and so on, all the while spending more and more money per month on costly rent for the office space. The business does not have an individual assigned to decide an expiry date for the documents, so they continue to pile up, with no end in sight.

5. Inefficient Access can Create Customer Service Issues: Without any proper Records Management, the company's employees spend enormous chunks of their time searching for the proper points of reference and critical files. Thousands of potentially valuable man hours are thrown down the drain.

So, as demonstrated in the points above, even though this company had the perfect business model, the best employees, and the largest customer base, it can easily experience growing pains on those five (and many more) counts. The seemingly mundane and tedious chore of keeping the records was neglected in favor of lower short-term costs, and this company is now paying the price. This should illustrate to you the importance of establishing, maintaining, and enforcing an effective Records Management strategy.

One of the biggest challenges for Non-Profits, Social Services organizations, and Government Agencies looking for Document Management Solutions is the challenge of obtaining funding. It seems that not a day goes by where funding isn't being cut, and the competition for precious dollars is continually growing. Recognizing this challenge, Shoreline has worked with our partners to develop a unique offering to help organizations obtain funding through Grants.

The good news is that there is a vast array of Federal, State and Foundation grants available - many of them with increased dollars from The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) - to help you invest in Document Management technologies which can allow you to serve more people and mange your applications and initiatives with increased efficiencies.  

Document Management Grants are now available, and our team can help you find the money you need to make your project a success. Shoreline Records Management, has partnered with the Grants Office experts to help you navigate the grants landscape. In cooperation with one of Our Business Partners, Hyland Software, we offer this FREE service to help determine what grants are available that could make a difference to your organization.

There are no specific qualifications, and our service will help you determine what funding may be available to make your organization more efficient with no risk or obligation. To get started, complete our Document Management Grants Analysis Form Today and we'll begin to research the available sources of funding to help you address your most challenging document management issues today.

While We can't win the grants for you, we can help you move from an interested applicant to a compelling candidate. It's time to make your old technology work better for you. With this Free Service, you'll be able to:

• Develop insight into the grant funding landscape for IT spends
• Better identify, obtain and manage grant dollars
• Improve transparency and service

Sign Up Today to take advantage of this service and find out how we can help your organization today!

Network Document Scanners are a popular choice for companies getting started with document scanning, and with good reason. They're reasonably priced, don't require a dedicated computer, and help companies quickly convert Paper to Digital Images. When looking for a scanner though, it's easy to be overwhelmed by all of the choices - are you sure you know what DPI is best for your application? When you go to make a purchase decision, consider these factors:

1) Daily Scanning Volume - This is the most important consideration when buying any scanner, networked or otherwise. Think about how many pages you'll need to capture on a daily basis, and make your buying decision accordingly. Try not to consider your entire backfile scanning project when making this determination, either - just think about how many pages you're likely to capture on a daily basis during the normal course of business. You can always outsource to a document scanning service provider to address your bulk scanning issues, saving you time and money in the process.

2) Bundled Software - Without Software, a scanner is just an expensive paperweight. You should make sure that some level of document scanning software is included with the equipment. It's particularly helpful if this is a flexible software toolkit like eCopy or NSi Autostore. These packages will let you do more than just drop images on network share devices and help you drive more value out of your investment.

3) Touchscreen or Keyboard Capabilities - Once you scan an image, you're going to want to be able to tag it with some sort of meaningful data to let you find it, or at least let the person on the other end of the receipt have an idea what it is. Be sure that the device you choose has a Touchscreen interface at the least, and ideally offers the option of attaching a keyboard. Some models, like the HP and Fujitsu Network Scanners, even come with built in keyboards, making them an attractive alternative for companies that need to add a bit more detail to what they're scanning.

There are a lot of options available when looking to buy a scanner, and it's important to not be distracted by the bright and shiny features. Most of the time, they're not going to be of much use to you. Instead, keep these practical elements in mind when making your buying decision and you'll end up much happier with the results.

To be sure, Microsoft has invested a lot of time and resources in improving upon previous iterations of Sharepoint, and the technology has come a long way since it's initial release. Today, I would not be alone in considering Sharepoint as one of the market leaders in the ECM (Enterprise Content Management) space, and we've been proponents of recommending it to clients when appropriate.

One of the challenges, however, is efficiently capturing paper content and delivering it to Sharepoint so that it can be searched and retrieved by users. There are many products available in the market to address this challenge, including Kofax Capture and KnowledgeLake - both of which are excellent solutions.

But what about Companies that want to leverage the benefits of Sharepoint without purchasing high-speed scanners and investing the time and resources in scanning the files themselves?

That's where our outsourced scanning services for Sharepoint come in. Our Production Document Scanning Bureau is capable of converting millions of pages on a monthly basis, and provides firms with a low price per page to convert paper to digital format. We handle the document preparation, scanning, quality control, and indexing, and return to clients a series of files that can be easily imported to Sharepoint.

Whether you're using an older version of the Sharepoint platform, or you plan to take advantage of the features that Sharepoint 2010 has to offer, consider outsourcing the scanning of your files. You'll be able to achieve a more rapid return on your document management investment, and save yourself a whole lot of hassle in the process.

Ready to take the first Step to getting your files scanned to Sharepoint?
Contact us today to discuss your Document Scanning Project and find out how our services can help lower your costs and accelerate your return on investment.

There’s a great post over on Mashable – 5 Simple Tools for a Paperless Office. It’s really a great cheat sheet on how to use some really cool, useful software and online services to reduce paper and become more efficient, but I found myself reading it and thinking about the clients that I’ve worked with over the past ten years. These are all very cool tools, but I don’t think that they’re going to really take you any closer to a paperless office.

More importantly, not one of them is going to ensure that you’ll actually be able to FIND something when you go to look for it. And therein lies the problem facing businesses today. Document Management tools have some fantastic bells, whistles, and doodads, but do any of them actually do anything useful?? Honestly, out of the whole list presented, the mention of Google Apps for Business at the footnote is probably the most useful of all of the items.

Google Apps for Business is missing one key component, however. They still have added the viewer. Plug Google's fancy document viewer (you know, the one they use for Google books), into Google apps and bam! – Now you’ve really got a solution for a Paperless Office. You’d be able to tag metadata, search, and view documents from anywhere that there’s a browser.

Except… There’s no audit trails. There are still no annotation capabilities. There’s no really great, easy way to efficiently scan large volumes of documents to Google Apps. Perhaps most importantly, the more consumer-like these tools become, the biggest thing that’s missing isn’t feature functionality- it’s guidance and best practices. Scanning files isn’t hard. It’s preparing them for scanning, indexing them, and making sure that people can find them that makes it difficult. 

Recently, I had an opportunity to ask Jason some questions about the Challenges and Opportunities in Long Island's Employment market, as well as how businesses can use the market to improve their operations. Here's What Jason had to share:

What are the biggest challenges facing Long Island Employers today?

Putting aside the current economy, which is starting to change and gain momentum, the long-term challenge for local employers is plugging the talent drain of fleeting Gen X/Gen Y workers needed to replace aging baby boomers who retire and move elsewhere.  This is a dynamic we have heard about, read about and had conferences on but there have been very little solutions presented. Both of these generational opposites may have trouble justifying remaining on LI if compensation is not competitive with cost of living.  This region is consistently faced with the challenges involved in relocating employees to this region.  LI companies need to make the investment in training and retaining their talent resources while exploring creative solutions to keep  an active talent pipeline.  Also, watch for the rapid increase in employees looking for virtual work options and consulting engagements rather than full-time direct employment.

Where are the biggest opportunities for those looking for employment?

Technology, Healthcare, Engineering and Sales.  Digital advancements and Economic Stimulus have ignited change in Healthcare, Technology and Engineering/Construction. Long Island employers are seeking versatile professionals who have dynamic skill-sets in these industries.  The need for Sales professionals has been steady for the last 8 months and now the mid-level sales management has come back. 

How can businesses use the market to help them improve their talent roster?

It has been a buyer's market, although we are now seeing small changes such as competitive offers and buy-backs. This is still a very good time to take advantage of the talent marketplace and acquire talent that might otherwise not be available financially, emotionally or intellectually.  However, don't bargain hunt; recognize value, take time to meet candidates, conduct exploratory interviews, bring on temporary staffing help to help with seasonal or project needs and keep talent close to your brand. Do not put your organization in the position where the market comes back, talent is scarce and you are stuck saying "we should have connected with the talent/candidates we often look for when we had the chance."   Recognize that good hires can be made at every level, but be mindful not to send the wrong message to your remaining staff.  Make it clear that such hires are not luxuries, but can put the company at a competitive advantage, during and after the economic recovery.

Thanks to Jason for taking the time to share his thoughts on the state of the Long Island Employment Market. Be sure to visit Lloyd Staffing for all of your Employment Service needs.

Bueller... Bueller... anyone want to take a crack at this "exciting" topic?

Archive Storage is a bit of a confusing term for many people, and oftentimes people will use the term to describe one of two things:

1. Archival Storage of Paper Documents - If you're looking for long-term storage of paper documents, then Archive Storage is likely the way to go. Our Facility, for example, is designed to accommodate long-term retention of documents for a low-monthly fee. Pricing is based on the volume of information to be stored and the retention requirements (how long you need to keep the files), and is expressed as a Price Per Month, Per Box. For Bankers Boxes (1.2 Cu. Ft.), our monthly storage price is usually less than $.30 per box per month, but pricing can go both up and down significantly based on the total volume of information that you have.
2. Archive Storage of Data Files - Especially now, Paper is not the only thing that you need to keep for a long time. For Data Archiving, there are a number of solutions and services available, but there are very few of these solutions that offer true long-term, permanent data archiving. If permanent Archive Storage of Data Files is important to you, then storage on Optical Media, is likely the most appealing option.

If you need to preserve your Paper Documents for a long time, we can certainly help. Contact one of our Archive Storage Experts to get pricing for your specific project. For more information about long term archiving of data, visit our partner Data Archiving Corp.

Do you understand Records Management?

Download our Free Records Management eBook today and get Practical Guidance on the importance of deploying a Records Management policy for your organization.

For example, I recently met with a Law firm that was using about 400 Sq. Ft of Prime Commercial Space on 7th Avenue for file storage, and this was just on one of their six floors! Even Now, with Midtown Manhattan's Class A space posted an average asking rental rate of $64.26 per square foot in the first quarter of 2010, the monthly cost for File Storage for this firm is $2,142.00 - Not exactly the best use of funds when you consider that you could store the same 2,000 Boxes offsite for less than $600.00 per month.

In the end, if you're still keeping old files in your high-priced office space, now might be a good time to reconsider this strategy. Your bottom line will thank you!