Five top reasons to organize your documents, paper based and/or electronic records.

1. Litigation risk:
Reduced litigation risk is of prime importance to specific industries, however,I think it is a concern to anyone operating a business. Evidence needed to reconstruct facts is a major reason for managing your business records.

There are guidelines in managing business documents companies can adopt to enhance their regular routines so that their documents can be found in a state that can be presented, if need be. Other concerns such as how long to keep or toss your documents is another facet of document management, which applies to good practices and goes hand in hand with litigation.

Not only will poorly managed documents reflect a relaxed approach to organizing important documents, it may cause a business to become vulnerable to serious legal issues.

2.Regulatory compliance:
Some industries are regulated and must comply with some form of recordkeeping obligations from the time the document is created to its disposal. Therefore, all records, which are maintained and accessible in case of audits, will be readily available.

3.Finding the right document:
Finding the right document for any business activity will bring forth improved efficiency. Working with clients and/ or colleagues on a project requires you to work with all related documents associated with each project efficiently, including revisions and their final copy.

Spending too much time finding any document, no matter the format, including email, will be costly overall. Statistics Canada has documented the findings of lost or misfiled documents. 7.5 % of documents are lost and 3% of the remaining documents are misfiled. The cost to reproduce a lost document is estimated at $250.00

A lost or misfiled document can have serious business consequences for ongoing activities. Being able to respond to queries from any source requesting information is a valid reason for following best practices for managing documents.

4.Increased productivity:
Working in an organized environment with workflow processes and best practices for document management will relieve stress, add security measures, and increase productivity.

For example, borrowing a document, paper based or electronic, can be set up similar to borrowing a book in a library. There is a need to know who has the document, where it is, who has access to the document and when is it due back. When working with electronic documents, the document can be blocked so that no one else can work on the document at the same time. Once the borrower has finished working with the document, revisions can be identified and access becomes available once again to those who have permission to access the document.

When you do not have a system in place, the checking in or out of documents is no longer controlled. How frustrating is it to be wasting time and energy finding those documents, be it paper based or electronic.

5.Cost savings:
Having a records management system is not only advisable, it will save you money in the long run. Lost or misfiled documents will be decreased and the cost for recovery of documents will be minimal. Storage costs will be reduced if working with practices as to how long to keep or toss documents.




Francine Renaud
Records Management Consultant
http://www.timeouttoorganize.com/
Tel: 250-763-3988