Effective records management involves more than 'scan and save'

According to David Reagler, president of Arkansas Records Management, the all-too-popular office practice of scanning and saving a document to a hard drive without a system of tracking and retrieval is little more than the electronic version of boxing paper and stacking it in a closet. Once the scan and save is complete, one may feel satisfied that an effective backup is done. That feeling is a false sense of security with potentially disastrous results.

"This brings to mind the consequences of scanning and saving without a tracking and retrieval system, experienced by a Little Rock customer." Reagler said. "They were scanning and storing their records on several hard drives in their network. A staff member attempted to load some new software into their systems and in so doing accidentally deleted more than 400,000 documents.

"The IT manager wasn't told what the content was on the drives and by the time they caught the error, it was no longer feasible to recover the lost information from their backups," he said. "That's a shame, and is preventable, because most businesses and professional practices today have the hardware technology in place to implement effective records management, but they are not taking full advantage of what they have."

Moving from the electronic closet to effective records management is a five-step process:

1. Declare the record. Not all documents are records. An email deciding where to go to lunch does not need to be retained. An email confirming a purchase order for equipment does.

2. Classify the record. Once a document is declared a record, attach a retention period with it. Work orders, for instance might be stored for three years after the job is complete. Health records might have to be stored for 10 years.

3. Store the record. The electronic record must be stored, and at the same time, made available for staff to utilize it and accomplish "work."

4. Protect the record. The record "has" to have integrity. It can't be altered or destroyed during its useful life.

5. Enforce the retention and disposition. When it is time for the record to be moved from "active" status to "inactive" status or destroyed, the system must facilitate this process.

"There are a lot of upsides to this procedure and no downsides that I know of," Reagler said. "You know where everything is and have quick operational access; you keep the records you need for regulatory compliance and can easily access those records; and, with a proper records management system you can eventually destroy unneeded records or even archive them, if that is your choice.

"The good news is, you do not have to figure out how to do all this on your own," he said. "We provide software, training, and support to effectively streamline records management for virtually any operation. With effective records management, the ultimate benefit is you free up staff time and company resources to do more of what you do best."

Arkansas Records Management is located at 156 Stanage Drive. Call 525-5752.

Business on 08/25/2014

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