5 Common Mistakes

Document storage and management can be one of the most challenging problems to solve for any company. Having a secure, efficient and reliable document storage and management strategy is key to keeping any company running smoothly. But giving your employees this responsibility is fraught with danger and can be a real headache. Any mistakes can be costly and time-consuming.

However, there is some good news! Most of the mistakes that can be made are fairly common and are relatively easy to prevent.

Here is a list of the most common and how to mitigate the risks associated with the mistakes.

1. Having a workable retention schedule – keeping excess records is always a problem. Documents sitting around after their usable life can create a treasure trove of information. Information that should have been destroyed but instead is now a large liability. A good retention schedule can help your business keep track of all your records. Those records that you are required to keep by law or best practice while getting rid of those documents that are past their useful life and are now a liability.

2. Keeping records on site – storing important records on site is a risky proposition. Most businesses are not built with that sort of security in mind. Off-site document storage provides the security needed to protect your documents from criminal behaviour. A good site will also provide the necessary access to your documents.

3. Secure chain of custody – Many times when embarking on a document management or storage project, the physical documents have to be transported from one facility to another. Many document managers think that the job is done when the business that they have hired to do the job picks up the documents. What isn’t always understood is that the documents will likely touch many hands before the project is actually finished. When many other hands are handling documents, there has to be a secure chain of custody all the way through the process. Ensure that your document management provider demonstrates a secure chain of custody.

4. Backing up documents regularly – Document management solutions seek to provide insurance against the fact that your paper documents are easily destroyed. Many companies get into the rut of thinking that their documents are automatically backed up by their document management provider without verifying that the backup is actually occurring on a regular basis. If anything were to ever happen and the backup was not actually occurring when it was supposed to, valuable data will be lost.

5. Using external storage devices – With computer memory capacity getting larger and larger, external storage devices have become more and more popular for backing up data. The problem with backing up data on external storage devices like USB drives and external hard drives is that they can easily be stolen or lost. Using a cloud document management system will allow the storage necessary but still, allow you access like it is on an external storage device.

If you are interested in learning more about our document management or document storage services, give us a call at 01484 505321. We will be more than happy to answer any questions that you might have.