There is increasing awareness that complying with governance legislation shouldn`t just be an expense - it can also offer some return on investment and improve the business and customer experience.
The "rule of thirds" gives practical advice for how to achieve this.
The rule of thirds is a general principle that goes beyond a company-specific product or service in meeting the return on investment dreams of executives responsible for compliance.
Most organisations keep the wrong information, keep too much of it, for too long and in the wrong place. Many people make the mistake of thinking all information in the business sits on IT assets. That simply isn`t true. Company information spans mainframe systems, ERP systems, the desktop, mobile devices, filing cabinets, desk drawers; the entire informational gambit.
First third
The first rule of thumb in the rule of thirds states that only a third of information needs be kept near to hand and readily available, in an accessible format that can be used by multiple people.
Most organisations keep the wrong information, keep too much of it, for too long and in the wrong place.
Paul Mullon, information governance executive at Metrofile
It is only this information that should take up expensive office and computer real estate and money spent on storage, backups, restoring, disaster recovery, filing cabinets, files, imaging systems, fire extinguishers, environmental control, and more.
That`s because this is the information that drives the business. Identify it and treat it like gold.
Where many organisations go wrong is treating all the information in their stores like gold. That just costs businesses in the long term.
Second third
The second rule states that, with a little effort, time, analysis and research, a third of the information in organisational information stores can probably be destroyed.
That is the average number of duplicates and non-business records that clog-up offices, filing cabinets and electronic storage devices. Get rid of them.
Where does it all come from? As an example, if an e-mail with an attachment is forwarded to 10 people, there are already well over 11 unnecessary copies, since most people save attachments.
If attachments are longer than three pages, most people print them. That`s an additional copy. Now imagine changing the document and trying to ensure everyone has an up-to-date copy. What results can be chaos as the number of copies of a single document continues to grow.
Most organisations have more than 10 employees. Some have thousands. The business is paying to store all of those records. Besides the obvious issues with this, without a proper management programme, the business is at risk.
For instance, if documents need only be kept for five years and a conscientious records manager deletes them after that period, but seven years later these documents begin cropping up in either e-mail or paper form during a court case. The court will question the organisation`s ability to comply with governance legislation. At that point, the court typically asks for a great deal more information as it checks up on what it believes to be sloppy records management, which costs the organisation time and money to retrieve and display.
And don`t think that because this is SA you will get away with it. Many may laugh at the Americans and their litigious society, which we are nowhere near, but it doesn`t mean we don`t have laws and our courts won`t apply similar principles.
It boils down to a simple statement of fact: if hundreds of thousands of documents don`t need to be managed, then don`t manage them. It just costs money.
Third third
The third rule of thumb in the rule of thirds states that if a business record must be kept, but the frequency of retrieval is very low, then store it off-site or off-system. This applies to records being kept "just in case". This is not a punt for off-site storage companies but rather a plea for organisations to become more efficient and start looking at the most-cost effective way to store information.
The simple fact is it remains significantly cheaper to store records with professionals off-site. Not only is it lower cost, but professional people are looking after the records, with all the associated benefits.
Very few organisations have custom systems to manage these semi-active and archive records and so they experience inefficiencies in the system from a software, hardware and professional skills perspective.
Custom warehouses use random storage with no wasted space and they go up as high as they can to optimise the usage per square metre of floor space.
The rule of thirds is a guideline that companies can use as a starting point for an effective retention and records management strategy that delivers return on investment as part of a greater compliance programme.
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