What is Records Management?

Records management means the planning, controlling, directing, organizing, training, promoting and any other managerial activities involved with records creation, maintenance, use, and disposition. All of this is to achieve proper documentation in order for your business to run efficiently and compliant.

Objectives of Records Management

1. Accurately and completely document company policies and operations
2. Control the quantity and quality of records produced
   
3. Establish and maintain control with respect to records creation in order to prevent the creation of unnecessary records
   
4. Simplify the activities, systems, and processes of records creation and of records maintenance/use
   
5. Preserve and dispose of records in accordance with industry regulations
   
6. Direct continuing attention to records from their initial creation to their final disposition
7. Creates a chain of custody for handling confidential documents, assuring records are in the right hands at all times
8. Builds accountability throughout any organization by specifying record-handlers and the flow of records by those handlers
9. Systematic approach helps keep current with governing regulatory laws
10. Systematic approach allows for timely and accurate destruction of documents, which reduces time and storage costs

Without a records management program, these are some of the outcomes:
 
“Organizations without retention programs can often remove from higher-cost offices areas as much as 55% of records being kept there--as either obsolete (to be destroyed immediately) or inactive (must be retained but may be transferred to a low-cost records center ” (Robert Allerding, CRM, FAI, records management consultant).

“Because they have taken no inventory, most organizations have no way of knowing what all their information assets are and where those assets are located” (Information Management Associates, Inc. hereafter “IMA”).


“Keeping some records but not others beyond their scheduled retention can increase exposure to negative inference in audit or litigation" (TN).


“U.S. managers spend an average of 4 weeks a year searching for or waiting on misfiled, mislabeled, untracked, or ‘lost’ papers” (Cuadra Associates).

Records are not ignored when a records management policy is in place.  This attention to your business records allows for peace of mind and increased operational success.