Paper. That’s the one thing all businesses have in common in some shape or form. The difference is that some businesses are drowning in it while others have taken the steps to manage and maintain it.

Something else that most businesses have in common is the requirements and regulations to stay compliant. The price of non-compliance can be very costly and, if you ask anyone who has gone through a non-compliance situation, they will tell you it’s not fun.

Thankfully, there are five steps you’d do well to consider when developing a process for retaining your documents and staying compliant:

1.) Don’t be a hoarder and retain every document just because. Different types of documents have required legal lifespans before it is OK to destroy them. Do your research on those timeframes and plan accordingly.

2.) When we say retain your documents, it doesn’t have to be in paper form in a filing cabinet, and hopefully that’s not your only plan of retention. Consider implementing a paperless solution to convert and store your documents digitally. That way when you actually need to look up a specific document from five years ago, you’ll be able to just do a simple search and retrieve. Having an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system will decrease the need to store paper documents and surely increase your productivity and workflows that revolve around them.

3.) One of the key issues with compliance is data security. When you store your documents in filing cabinets and storage rooms, you’re not keeping your information secure. It’s at risk to being ruined by natural disasters, fires, theft, or handled by the wrong person. Having a paperless solution allows you to really secure your information and control who can access it.

4.) Having the ability to access your information the moment that you need to is important. Customers are used to getting fast service anywhere else they go, so they expect it from our businesses as well. If it takes you hours or days to locate a file or document to complete a transaction of business process, then you would greatly benefit from an ECM solution. Your customers and employees will both benefit from this. Allow your employees to spend their time on more value-added activities instead of spending time searching for information.

5.) When you implement an ECM solution to manage your content, you can control how long you want to keep/store your information. Depending on the type of information, you may only need to keep a record for two years or forever. Within your ECM system you can set termination dates for data to know when it’s safe to discard. This way you don’t keep accumulating more documents and information without getting rid of the ones you no longer need in a safe and secure way.

It’s important that you take all of the necessary steps to protect your business and customer information and to stay compliant with all of the current laws and regulations. There’s room for you to improve in this area, including taking the preceding steps to move away from paper and towards a more secure paperless environment for your organization.  

Dan Termale is a Digital Community Specialist at Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A