Gilmore Blog https://www.gilmoreservices.com/blog/topic/records-storage

If your company is committed to adopting modern records management trends, it’s time to convert some of your paper documents to digital files. Doing so is not only environmentally conscious but this simple process can save money and improve your reputation with clients.

In today’s highly regulated business environment, responsible business owners need to carefully manage and monitor who handles important business documents and when. If your records management plan includes offsite or digital document storage, a specific process, known as the “chain of custody,” needs to be a key part of your security considerations.

As a business owner or manager, knowing the location and security of important business records should be a top priority. Not knowing where and how your critical documents are stored risks identity theft, compliance fines and damage to your company’s reputation.

Identity theft is a common concern for both businesses and consumers, and not without reason. A recent study found that $15 billion was stolen from 13.1 million U.S. consumers in 2015. In the past six years, identity thieves have stolen $112 billion.

The New Year is a great time for your business to look ahead and put in place needed changes in key areas, including records management. While the implementation of new processes can be confusing and unorganized, it doesn’t need to be, and improved processes can ultimately benefit your business in the long run.

Hard drives hold your business’s most valuable information, including proprietary data, financial statements and employee records. While the use of hard drives are widely prevalent and often necessary, the value of this information can create a problematic scenario when it comes time to upgrade your company’s hardware and increase technological efficiency.

Unfortunately, you can’t simply throw a hard drive in the trash at the end of its useful life and hope the information it contains will remain safe.

Modern companies understand the importance of reliable document scanning and digital conversion of records for remote access capability and information backup. They also realize that managing physical document storage in-house can tax even the most resource-rich businesses.

As your business grows, managing documents in-house becomes a time- and resource-consuming task. Growth means increased responsibility across business verticals and with that increased responsibility comes a reduced capacity to internally manage the storage of your documents.

When considering document storage solutions, many businesses disregard professional third-party options over cost concerns. Storing documents in house or in a self-storage unit is often viewed as a cost-effective alternative to professional solutions.

Keeping business operations streamlined and running smoothly is a key goal for many business owners. After all, as your business grows, so too do clients, responsibilities, and business documents.

Business documents may include the paper documents you house on-site, or the electronic records you keep for each new customer. Managing records is a necessary aspect of many businesses, but keeping them organized and secure over time can present an unforeseen challenge for many business owners and administrative professionals.

The world today is practically overflowing with information. From mailed publications and credit card offers to emails and digital data, document and information management can be overwhelming.

That said, it’s all the more reason why records management professionals need to prioritize document storage strategies. After all, while you may have tried "winging it" with document storage in the past, that just won’t cut it any more.

Records management professionals know that in order to solidify an effective records management solution, they need a bulletproof plan in place. And while organization is already a key tenet of your day-to-day, there’s more to a records management plan than meets the eye.

Business owners, office managers, and administrative professionals know that as a business grows, so do the business records. As a company brings on more business, secures more clients, and serves a greater community, the essential paperwork can literally begin to pile up—from medical records to financial documents and anything in between.

In many businesses, storing sensitive documents, and destroying them appropriately, is an essential aspect of the record management process. It’s important to know how long your documents need to be stored and when they need to be destroyed in order to remain compliant with federal regulations and industry standards.

It can be challenging to stay on schedule and keep a consistent process in place, especially in situations where new information is developing all the time.

If your company regularly deals with sensitive information, then you know the importance of secure document storage. This is especially true when official business paperwork or private patient records need to be stored for several years in order to align with document compliance standards.

If you’re thinking about partnering with a records management company, it’s a good idea to learn how the company operates and what exactly it can do for your business. After all, you’ll be relying on that company to handle, store, and securely dispose of your company’s sensitive physical or digital documents, so you’ll want to know what the company does and how it can help.

Have you ever wondered what a records management company actually does in a typical day? Here’s a hypothetical “day in the life” to help you learn just what can be accomplished in eight hours.

Understanding the often complex details of records management is no easy job. If you handle records management for a business, you know it’s an ever-changing discipline that can be both exciting and frustrating.

There are a thousand different things a business owner or office manager needs to think about every day. While legal document management is extremely important, it’s not something you want to have to worry about among other urgent matters. And it’s certainly not something you can afford to spend hours or days figuring out.

No business wants to lose money. In fact, successful business owners are almost always looking for ways to boost revenue, cut costs, or both.

Sometimes it can feel like there is just not enough hours in the day. Imagine having a couple more hours to file away finished projects and help cut down the growing stack of files piling up on your desk.

With another year almost over, it’s time to make those New Year's resolutions again. We're not talking about your typical personal resolutions, but instead, we mean your business records management resolutions. Methods of handling records are constantly changing to better protect your sensitive information. Now is the time to get serious about records management for your company and know what big movements to look out for in 2016.

2015 is quickly winding down. As you look back over the past year, are you confident that your business records management program was as effective as possible?

Running a successful business is a lot like juggling. You need to keep a lot of different things in the air at the same time, which means you’re in constant motion. Sometimes, to save the majority of these items, you need to let one or two drop.

By their very nature, law firms generate a tremendous amount of records. Most, if not all of those records, whether on paper or in digital form, contain sensitive information that must be cared for properly to protect the firm and the privacy its clients.

All components of a machine must be in working condition in order to deliver maximum results. For example, a vehicle cannot run efficiently if it is not properly taken care of. The car requires gas, routine maintenance, and a regular oil change. The process of maintaining business records is similar to keeping a machine running smoothly.

Just like the materials we use to create vehicles today have become more economical and efficient, so have records management processes, and the old-fashion days of searching for boxes for a single hard copy document are over.

With regulations constantly changing, technology always evolving, and criminals working harder than ever to get a hold of sensitive information, deciding whether to store or destroy your business documents can be confusing, even stressful. What needs to be saved? What needs to be destroyed? How? When? Where?

There are rules for running a business. Just like in any sport, each player has a position they are in charge of, but still rely on the assistance of their teammates to complete a play.

Every business manages documents, whether it's medical files or financial records. Of course, some industries deal with more information than others. Take the medical field, for example. Hospitals are usually high-traffic environments, generating a lot of documents. For a successful system, it is mandatory to keep a paper trail, or some form of electronic documentation.

Many business look to secure document shredding to stay compliant with current records laws and regulations. While document destruction is necessary, records management compliance involves more than just making sure your business records are properly destroyed.

In fact, there are helpful questions to ask yourself to ensure your records management system is fully compliant. As you go through the list, be sure to answer the questions as accurately as possible to keep your business on the right track.