Reasons

Information is your long-term capital. Today it is stored on paper as well as in file systems, professional applications, email programmes and on private (network) drives. These different storage locations and the existence of several versions and copies of records often complicate a fast and reliable locating of relevant documents.

To permit a quick overview of transaction and project activities in day-to-day business, it is essential for records to have meaningful titles, to relate to each other and to be accessible in a logical overall structure. Employees are the experts: It is very important to store and enable access to individual knowledge.

Records management provides a prerequisite for good corporate management and corporate control and ensures a handling of business records complying with the current legal regulations. Record management guarantees:

• the traceability of business activity,
• the availability of business records,
• the compliance with internal and legal documentation and archiving requirements,
• the establishment of binding responsibilities for the handling of business records and
• the provision of evidence in legal procedures.

Records management also provides an economic benefit. Costs and time can be saved by:

• minimising business risks by ensuring authenticity and integrity of records,
• avoiding multiple storage of documents,
• reducing time spent on locating documents,
• simplifying the handling of access authority,
• reducing storage capacity,
• integrating emails in business files,
• securing the availability of documents produced by an absent employee,
• introducing new employees more easily due to more logical and consistent classification systems.