When I think of business records storage I often envision that scene from one of the Harry Potter movies when the student wizards are moving through an endless warehouse filled with stacked glass globes, which eventually all fall and create a catastrophe. Or maybe the end of the Indiana Jones film when the Ark is packed into a wooden crate and put into a building filled with wooden crates—never to be seen again.
Obviously you want to avoid these outcomes for the storage of your business records. If you really didn’t care about crashing or disappearing, there would be no point in storing your records at all. It certainly would make business processes easier to simply discard records after a certain period of time—five years perhaps.
It’s clear to most managers that the majority of paper filed in cabinets, whether neatly or in a mess, could easily be discarded. No one knows what’s there, so no one is likely to miss it. Unfortunately, most people can’t think of many things they hate doing more that weeding out file cabinets. But if someone keeps on top of it, the process of storing business records does not have to be quite so onerous. (Hopefully you will not have a project as I once did, where I found documents older than I was. I doubt if many of those papers had much use when they were new. I used a lot of trash receptacles.)
A business records management system has to begin with an inventory of what is in the office, off-site storage, and all company locations—subsidiaries, outlying offices, factories, etc. Most firms will be totally surprised at how much paper they have. (Hopefully, they recycle paper. I actually worked in an office supervising a construction project, with just too many vendor catalogs. So they loaded them up, took them to the site, and poured them into the hole dug for the building. I guess that might be recycling.) Since the goal is to reduce the amount of paper before it is sent to storage, a procedure for organization and destruction is needed. So a records management system and timetable is necessary.
Records management procedures can be found online, or from your industry trade association. Tailor what you find to your unique circumstances, and then make sure it is implemented throughout the enterprise. Records management can become a nightmare if it is only used when it is convenient. Make sure that everyone understands this—maybe give rewards for getting it done efficiently.
Part of any records procedure is a schedule for retention and destruction. This schedule usually is formulated from a combination of regulations, industry practice, and common sense.
Storing Business Records
There are lots of options for housing your records. Business records storage services can provide as much or as little as you want. They can come in and totally take over the entire process, even writing and setting up a workable procedure. They can organize and pack boxes, label them, and move them to their storage facility. Or you could elect to have them scan all of the paper to produce digital copies of everything.
Most firms elect to have boxes of documents stored in an off-site secure facility. Before selecting a vendor, check such things as: delivery methods, times and costs; labeling or indexing capabilities; and maintenance of a convenient-to-use record of your boxes, with a clear indication when they are retrieved. They should also help you set up and maintain a destruction schedule and provide a guarantee that your documents will be shredded properly.
So the bottom line is to have a good system and stick with it. If you want your records storage to work there can be no exceptions. Help employees understand that, one: you will make sure that they can retrieve things they need, and two: keeping documents past their use date is not only expensive, but dangerous. (Dangerous because you must be consistent with files that may be requested for a legal process.)
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Connie Williams is an information junkie who lives to ferret out fascinating ideas for her readers. She writes blog posts on a variety of topics such as document scanning services. She has set up records procedures for several clients, and has been responsible for indexing, business records storage, and records management procedures.
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