Digital White Papers

44 WWW.ILTANET.ORG | ILTA WHITE PAPER FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT How Information Governance Initiatives Create Sustainable Cost Containment Without a system in place that has robust functionality for managing retention and workflow management, controlling growth will be nearly impossible. discounts on audit rooms or (and this is a hard one to pass up) an extremely discounted storage rate. For example, a vendor might offer 1,000 cubic feet of archival destruction for free. At face value, this might seem like a great deal. But if you have engaged risk management and know that your firm will not tolerate the risk of destroying files not reviewed by an aorney, then you know to pass it up. Controlling the Volume of Storage Accounts Once management has been engaged and favorable contract terms negotiated, the next and most important step in cost containment is to control the volume of your storage accounts. The most valuable item in your IG tool box is not a detailed policy nor an engaged management team: it is a records management system. Without a system in place that has robust functionality for managing retention and workflow management, controlling growth will be nearly impossible. An ideal records management system can house virtually the entire process surrounding retention and disposition, beginning with alerting users of retention eligibility all the way through approval of final disposition. Aempting to manage retention solely through reports and approvals sent via email complicates the process by failing to provide a clear history of decisions and actions taken by aorneys and records staff. Firms have oen relied on vendor systems to manage their offsite storage inventory, usually in addition to information captured in a legacy records system. This is a redundant and convoluted way to manage records usually relying on tying box contents to a client, maer or aorney. When a box is retrieved from storage, it sits in the office while the firm continues to pay for offsite storage. Consider this alternative: » Retrieve the box » Empty the contents » Fill it with new contents » Send the box back to storage This sidesteps two common pitfalls: The firm avoids paying for boxes not in storage, and it reduces the net growth of storage inventories each month. Most firms have boxes that have been outcarded for years. The firm could have a couple hundred to over a thousand boxes outcarded with no real way to track down the boxes or files. Reliably utilizing the circulation capacity of a records management system and regularly performing location audits will allow you to track barcoded files throughout the office. Does the firm continue to pay for storage in the hope that the box will resurface? The choice is to permanently withdraw the carton from the system and incur a fee or continue to pay for storage. Had there been a process to empty and refill the carton, the box would have been returned to storage, eliminating a charge for a new box and reducing net growth for the firm. Reducing the Volume of Existing Inventory While curbing net growth of offsite storage accounts is an important first step, it is not enough. To contain the rising costs of offsite storage agreements, firms must reduce the overall volume of

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