What’s at Stake?

Records management is no longer just about being able to find what you need – when you need it – even in organizations with data spread across the enterprise in disconnected repositories. That can be important, but the advantages of operational efficiency are now being replaced by the harsh demands of regulatory, statutory and litigation requirements.

In order for your organization to be confident of your ability to avoid court sanctions, litigation settlements, and the kinds of harshly-negative press coverage that can result in a loss of client or investor confidence – as well as the loss of client revenue and investor resources – data and records management compliance requirements and business–process efficiency must go hand in hand … not head-to-head.

Low-Priority / High-Risk: Properly organizing and maintaining records and information – in electronic formats as well as the more traditional paper “hard copy” format – is a vital key to the operational success of business process to enterprises of all sizes and types. Yet, for far too many at-risk public corporations, financial institutions, and other organizations accountable to the public, the management of records and other data stored as electronic information remains a relatively low priority. However, with new Federal evidentiary rules, with new legal precedents and other regulations, both prudent risk management objectives and sound business operational effectiveness demand that effective records management should have a very high priority.

The ability to identify, organize, maintain, and access needed information – across the entire enterprise, even when different kinds of data are stored in differing systems can be vital to both operational efficiency and regulatory compliance. Sometimes even more important, the ability to – when appropriate – properly disposing of data that is no longer needed can pay off in terms of cost savings, efficiency, regulatory compliance, and reduced litigation risk.

Proper Record Management Will Prevent Lawsuits

In the context of records and data management, the relative importance of each of these factors – cost savings, operational efficiency, regulatory compliance, and reduced litigation risk – varies between organizations. Yet in today’s complex and highly-regulated and often-litigated environment, no prudent business operation can overlook the risks – or the benefits.

Hidden Threat: The problems that most companies are routinely able to identify are just the visible 10 percent of the data management iceberg.Yet most of that records and data management iceberg remains invisible, hidden under water. This is an emerging issue – today, most of a given company’s ability to organize their paper records and to implement their current enterprise content management (ECM) software, then blend them effectively into a compliant and professional records and data management program – remains potential, rather than real. With very few exceptions, only those firms who’ve come crashing into this iceberg realize the risk. Until they are forced to deal with regulatory compliance, extraordinarily probing litigation or some confounding operational problem, most companies just don’t see the hazards.

It is this lack of visibility that prevents too many companies from getting started with essential records management initiatives now, before they find themselves behind the learning curve – or legally, behind the 8-ball. Prudent and Visionary: Properly organizing and maintaining – within a digital environment – an enterprise’s data, records and other key information – has become a key enterprise business process.

Unlike so many initiatives driven by only by clear-cut operational advantage, the importance of records management is also backed by – and to a large extent, forced upon corporations by – laws, regulations and court rulings. The ability to identify, organize, maintain, and access needed information – then properly dispose of the rest – has become an essential element of prudent and profitable business management.

When it comes to records management the lack of business-process efficiency has become a make-or-break, crisis-level situation. There are no more “safe harbors” or legally-convenient excuses for non-compliance. Data and records management is already a crisis-in-the-making for too many under-fire corporations, and there exists a potential records management crisis for every corporation or organization not already under fire.

That’s where Data Empowerment Group comes in …What’s troubling your company?

If your company is experiencing a crisis in:

• Information Compliance
• Information Management
• Information Classification
• Recovering Lost Data
• You need Data Empowerment.

Filling the gaps between your existing records management systems, Data Empowerment specializes in solving records and data management challenges for even the largest and most complex – and diversified – enterprises. Data Empowerment does this through its innovative content integration software, as well as with its focused workshops designed to help you identify the one right solution for you before you invest heavily in untested systems that might – or might not – be the solutions you need.

To protect your organization from harsh legal or regulatory sanctions – as well as for sound operational reasons not related to compliance crises – you need real-time and archival data classification, identification, retrieval and removal. Unless you already have the answer, Data Empowerment offers the solutions you have been looking for.

It’s high time to get your records under control. To learn more, call us at (702) 289–4230 or email sales@dataempowerment.com today!