What Is Records Management?

What Is Records Management?

The concept of records management may not sound like anything new - companies have been keeping records for years.

As they rely less on file cabinets and operate more with digital data, businesses are increasingly launching sophisticated records management tools. These applications go beyond simply storing documents - they let users categorize, edit, collaborate, and access the records. Most of the tools also let users on different access levels view and revise records, offering tiered security so all professionals in an organization can leverage the platform.

Compliance Plays a Role in Records Management Tool Efficacy

As more regulations govern document destruction and privacy policies, these tools also ensure that information is deleted in a timely manner. This helps to guarantee that a companies are not put at risk for litigation, and also helps to ensure their brand maintains a strong reputation for upholding data integrity as well as customer privacy.

To do so, companies create the policies that specify their protocol for record creation, organization and expiration. As such, IT companies can customize tools to meet the individual policy requirements and automate tasks to meet these guidelines; this helps to cut down on the administrative time to manage the system and provides cost-savings to the company as well as guaranteed compliance.

What Does a Records Management Application Do, Exactly?

The system typically accomplishes the following tasks:

Content Analysis: This aspect classifies which content is considered a record.

File Categorization: Upon determination that a record is applicable to be retained and managed in the system, this tool helps classify where the record goes depending on the policy that governsit. It also notes who is charge of the record, who gets access and how the record is disposed of. Meta data is extracted to make all data searchable.

Compliance Specification: This aspect of the tool determines if documents comply with regulatory guidelines and the corporate policy.

Non-active Records Collection:Records that are no longer active can be identified and processed from multiple sources such as email platforms and servers.

Record Auditing: This is essential to evaluate active records for long-term system maintenance.

Records Retention and Destruction: Records are specified with data on what should be retained, and for how long.When applicable, they are then destroyed in accordance with record retention policies.

Follow-up Actions:The system needs to be able to monitor all records and generate reports on the organization's overall practices.

The Author is involved with a business consulting firm and holds expertise in enterprise content management. He possesses great knowledge on content analysis which is considered as an integral part of record management.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Kandpal_Subhash/93396

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7686053

_(By Kandpal Subhash).