ABC of Record Management-From Beginning to End

As the world is getting more and more data sensitive, corporates from all over the world are focusing on the various dynamics of records and document management. But in developing economies like India, most of the small and medium class industries have just started to learn about it. In Fact, there are thousands of young entrepreneurs who are interested to begin it from scratch.

What should be considered as ‘Records & Documents’?

Today we are witnessing the second stage of the information revolution. A time when we are surrounded by a plethora of information, almost about anything and everything. But not all of this information is useful for us and hence need to be filtered through the funnel of legal and economic relevance.

However, according to the most accepted terms and conditions, any form information that can be used or presented as an authentic and valuable proof for some business transaction, legal matters or for any event and incident that took place in past, should be considered as records or documents.

There Are Basically Two Types of Records:

● Physical Records: Stored in Paper and Hard Copies.

● Digital Records: Stored in online servers & Databases.

Things that are often considered as valuable records and documents:

Legal documents, corporate data, financial transactions, Bills & Payment Records, Copyrights, health and medical reports, Professional certificates, birth certificates, citizen cards, business MOUs, personal and classified information, engineering designs, technical and managerial blueprints, Photographs, Images, ancient manuscripts, and paintings.

What is record management?

According to the ISO standard 15489, record management or what is popularly known as document management is nothing but an efficient and systematic process that controls the creation, storage, preservation, retrieval and the disposition of personal, confidential and corporate data, including the system of capturing and maintaining the evidence about the business activities and transactions in the form of physical and virtual format.

How to manage millions of records effectively?

As the total volume of records and documents is growing continuously on an everyday basis, It is very much essential to store and preserve these records in an organized manner. So, whether you are a small or medium class business organization or a big fish of the pond, You must create a self-sustainable records and document management system (RMS & DMS) which should not only be capable of accommodating and protecting millions of records and documents but should also help you in accessing, retrieving, digitizing and disposing of those records, just within a snap of your finger.

An effective records management strategy must involve these following steps. Just check what have you done so far?

Scientific Re-Evaluation & Segregation:

● Not all of the records are worthy of storage. So, you only need to tap on those which have some kind of economic, strategic, managerial or legal validity.

● In order to do this, You first need to re-evaluate your files records and documents based on a scientific methodology.

● Then, segregate the necessary and unnecessaries files based on their legal relevancy and retention schedules.

Classification, Categorization and Indexing:

● Once you identify the relevant records, It’s time to classify them under several categories, especially depending on the purpose of these documents. For example financial records, accounting records, sales & purchase records, client database, legal records, documents related to business deals, copyrights and proprietorship, HR records, etc.

● These categorized records should be compiled, filed and indexed in a proper order. Just implement advance colour coding methods and alphanumeric indexing for better identification and fast retrieval. In case you are dealing with a huge stockpile of physical records, then it would be wise to choose RFID based Barcode indexing technologies.

Secure Storage, Boxing and Packaging:-

● First, develop a futuristic recordkeeping policy. Develop a record storage facility as per your short term and long term record retention plans.

● Always store your physical records within the waterproof boxes. You can also install environment and pests controlling mechanisms inside your record storage sites.

● Create a digital backup or a cloud storage, in case you want to store these records in online servers.

● Building a self-governed document archiving systems is not a five-finger exercise. It could be a hectic and an expensive affair. Under such circumstances, you must collaborate or consult with a third party record management company near you.

Introduce a quick record retrieval system:-

No matter how big your storage sites are, if you can’t access your records in the appropriate moment, then it is nothing but a complete waste of time, energy and wealth. So besides creating a smart storage, you should also focus on building smarter documents retrieval systems.

Quick retrieval can be achieved in the following steps:

● Use RFID scanning to relocate the very particular document that you are looking for.

● After identifying the required files or records, scan them as soon as possible. Modern day digital and LASER scanners can be a useful tool for fast record scanning and document imaging.

● Finally, send the soft copies of these scanned documents to their relevant destinations and departments either by fax or emails.

● Retrieval becomes much easier, concise and cost-effective process, especially when you digitize your physical records on a regular basis and store those digital copies or soft copies in an online server.

● It would be much more comfortable if you use document management software. This would bring the data accessibility just on your fingertip.

Record Destruction:-

Almost all kinds of records do own some certain amount of life-span and it would not be a cost-effective decision to keep storing records which are expired or out of their legal retention schedule. So just Purchase latest paper-shredding machines which can destroy these unnecessary piles of documents just within few hours.

Record Storage Security and Network-Based Data Security:

To prevent offline-espionage and sabotage, Install CCTV cameras and online video monitoring systems inside and outside of your storage sites. Apart from that, Records with higher priority and confidentiality must be stored in a secure and password protected media vaults.

Advantages of effective file management:

As described by ISO 15489, All kinds of approaches that include creation, capture, storage and preservation of information both in physical and digital formats, ensures the availability of authentic and authoritative evidence on behalf of any business activity or transactions that took place in past. It also opens up a new window of immediate data accessibility, especially to those who need it, for as long as it is required.

● Data and information management ushers a new hope for a higher degree of transparency and accountability.

● Better decision making leads to accelerated operational efficiency and productivity.

● With more relevant data in hand, you can simply trace the performance and growth of your organization.

● Just outsource your file management projects to a trustworthy document management company and get a complete relief from the overwhelming burden of your physical records.

● Effective record keeping system protects your valuable and highly prioritized records from getting lost, mishandled, misused and misplaced.

● Provides a 360 umbrella-protection from online and offline espionage, hacking, sabotage and natural catastrophes.

● Reduce the burden of your physical records, save your official work-space, and allow you to renovate a futuristic workspace.

● Radically transform your records retrieval procedure and allows you to access your remote files and documents, just within a blink of an eye

● Drastically reduce your document storage cost and ensures 100% legal alignment with the existing data retention laws and regulation.

Conclusion:

Creating a self-sufficient document archiving system is not as simple as it looks like. It is an amalgamation of various multidimensional processes such as the collection, storing, preservation and the regular maintenance of physical records, record retrieval and data extraction, document digitization, scanning and imaging, time-bound document’s delivery and document disposition.

Doing all of these together would only enhance the level of managerial burdens upon your shoulders. So it would be wise to outsource your requirements to a third party record and document Management Company. You can create a self-regulated official records storage, only if the volume of data is not so large. But in case, the volume of physical storage exceeds the level of your storage capacity, Then you should not wait for further up-gradation. Instead of that, You must choose a reliable document storage partner immediately.

However, if you are looking for a comprehensive document ’s storage and file management solutions anywhere in Delhi or NCR, call us +91–11–43922222 or Request quote.