Records Management: New Challenges and Better Solutions

Systemware Records Management

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It seems that ever since the ancient Greeks appointed the first secretaries in the 6th Century B.C., records management has been growing more complex with increasing speed. Today’s records managers face a myriad of challenges as they handle millions of documents and terabytes of information. Not surprisingly, intense focus on regulatory compliance and mandated records management has resulted in the detection of significant gaps between the requirements and capabilities within most organizations.

Processes, procedures and systems are needed to support the explosive growth in the volume of records as well as the need for controls throughout the organization to maintain compliance. Records managers need a solution that handles paper as well as electronic records, is simple to integrate, and is extremely scalable – all in a single solution.

The vast challenge posed by electronic records has received much attention of late, but it’s important to remember that the transition from paper-based to electronic recordkeeping that began decades ago may take decades more to complete. While enterprises in all industries are required to maintain electronic records as well as physical records, companies in the financial services and healthcare industries face especially difficult data retention requirements because of the heavily regulated environment in which they operate. In a great many cases records management systems are still largely paper-based.

Plenty of corporations have vast stores of paper along with other assets in microfilm and microfiche. While some of that paper is grandfathered into paper legacy systems and will never be converted into an electronic system, the question becomes do you have two records management systems: one for paper and one electronic? Two different systems means two different searches each time a record is needed. So smart corporations are consolidating disparate systems into one that handles both paper and electronic records.

Integration a key as systems, formats multiply

Though a large percentage of records are electronic now, there are well in excess of 400 different electronic file formats that may have different processing and storage requirements. Records also are produced by a variety of sources: mainframe computers, business applications as well as office applications, for instance. Records management systems now must integrate with all kinds of systems that create them. And they need to seamlessly capture records from the time they are generated and immediately store them without human intervention. For truly seamless integration, it’s important for the solution to have an open architecture.

Records Management

Only 24% of US organizations have an integrated approach to managing paper and electronic records. AIIM Survey

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More records, kept longer

We’ve all been witnesses to the explosion of business information over the last five to 10 years: Email archive, business systems output as well as manually created documents. These volumes have now become so large that some systems installed even a decade ago can’t handle today’s volumes. And as we know, many more records need to be retained with longer periods for corporations to remain in compliance with regulatory requirements of legislation such as Sarbanes-Oxley, SEC 17a, USA Patriot Act, and Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The FRCP makes it clear that discovery and production of electronically stored information stands on equal footing with that of paper documents.

With more records needing to be kept for longer periods, it’s no surprise that corporations looking at records management solutions are placing a premium on scalability. The most prudent course of action for any organization is to deploy systems that can retain all electronic records as well as physical documents and assets making it accessible rapidly when needed. The stakes here are high. An organization that does not properly manage its records — electronic and otherwise — faces the potential for serious consequences, including heavy fines and prison time for those who knowingly destroy or falsify records.

Now more than ever, corporations need to be able to count on robust enterprise capture -- paper documents and electronic files -- as they take an integrated approach to records management. When evaluating potential record management solutions, organizations should consider a number of important capabilities – capabilities Systemware took into account in creating Records Manager.When evaluating potential record management solutions, organizations should consider a number of important capabilities.

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Capture remains the critical first step

Consistently capturing both physical and electronic records in an integrated manner across the entire organization is critical for comprehensive records management. Systemware provides more ways to capture records from a wide range of information types including: paper documents, desktop files, email, print streams, images, XML, PDF, and other objects.

Additional capture features include:

► Document scanning with optical character recognition (OCR) and bar code recognition (BCR)

► Separate and distinct pages functionality

► Quality assurance and verification of documents prior to committing content to solution

► Browser-based upload

► Drag & drag to folders

► Monitor Outlook folders

► Direct email capture (Exchange and/or Domino Server)

► Proactively monitors print spools and directories for automatic capture

► Supports application integration, directed capture and bulk load import

► Immediate access to existing content repositories without the need to convert the data

Classification made simple

Systemware makes classifying, declaring and storing documents as electronic records within one, comprehensive system simple and easy. Users can directly input record metadata prior to filing the record in its appropriate folder. Once in its folder, the record will inherit all of the security access and retention period characteristics related to that folder. And for application-generated documents, index values can be assigned by the application for automatic classification.

For physical assets, this solution provides users with a complete view of existing records as well as their locations by employing our record pointer capability. This pointer details not only supplies the type of medium used to store the physical record but also its physical location.

8% of US organizations lack any type of electronic management system, and 1% lacks ANY type of record keeping capability. AIIM Survey

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Complete control over access

All comprehensive records management solutions must incorporate advanced security and audit features, including a single sign-on facility, multiple controlled access levels, robust authentication and authorization protection, and advanced data encryption algorithms. Designated personnel are granted role-based permissions to access the solution. Systemware maintains a detailed, time-stamped log of all documents and content within the system. For compliance and audit purposes, the log shows details of all user access to system information.

This solution also provides the ability to define retention periods for stored or archived records, either to meet regulated compliance standards or internal policy. As a result, it enables organizations to maintain complete control over who can access and view their most sensitive information. With Systemware, the declared original record never leaves the archive and cannot be altered in any way throughout its entire lifecycle.

Complete lifecycle management

Administrators are able to easily manage the entire lifecycle of important business content and records. They are able to:

► Establish retention periods

► Organize and retain declared documents as well as other assets for a legally specified amount of time

► Create legal holds

► Provide quick access to records on demand.

Systemware’s solution is designed in conformance to DoD 5015.2 requirements and manages a record’s lifecycle from the date on which it was declared through its active and semi-active periods until it reaches final disposition, and is destroyed.

Multiple indexing improves search and retrieval

Systemware search and find capabilities are an improvement upon previous-generation technologies. It’s the best of both worlds because our search capabilities support and build upon traditional free-form text search competencies as well as significantly augmenting these competencies with a powerful suite of automated and index-based capabilities. Our more advanced content management technologies apply multiple indexes and automated analytics to produce the precise record and item needed. Multiple indexing is far more detailed and comprehensive than traditional corporate indexes, and acts as a layered table of contents to accelerate and focus search results. With this approach, Systemware presents very precise and granular information more quickly and efficiently into the hands of users.

Systemware, Inc. is a leading ECM company. that effectively and efficiently capture, index, store and manage the billions of documents generated by some of the largest organizations in the country. Systemware enables customers across vertical industries—including financial institutions, insurance, healthcare and retail—to make better business decisions, capitalize on information assets, improve customer service, reduce oper-ating costs and ensure compliance. Systemware offers a variety of ways to license and deploy its software — traditional implementation, cloud or hybrid.

About Systemware

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Email functionality extends to searches of documents

Email has become a primary vehicle for communicating and sharing information with employees, business partners, vendors, and customers. Many of these communications and their related attachments are critical records, which need to be managed in order to comply with the growing number of regulatory mandates.

Systemware Records Manager offers email functionality as part of an integrated approach to records management. Users can:

► Drag and drop email messages as well as attachments quickly from Microsoft Outlook

► Send content directly to content folders, project folders or record plans through SMTP server

► Quickly search all content including the content of email attachments and documents

► Find and view search results instantly - even if search terms are in the body of an attachment.

A better solution to meet new challenges

In today’s highly regulated and scrutinized corporate environment, records management is a critical requirement for organizations in all industries. Systemware can help meet this challenge by extending electronic record keeping capabilities to current business processes, applications and repositories. Systemware helps many organizations today to capture, classify, store, manage and dispose of all documents, scanned images, text messages, and all electronically generated content with one comprehensive solution.