THE WORLD?
CAN
RIM
SAVE
Chris Wacker
waterhouseCoopers estimates that 5% of all hardcopy records are lost or mis-filed. By centralizing scanned paper and electronic records in a secure, dig-ital repository with automatic classifi-cation and filing based on a formal file plan, employees have quick, easy ac-cess to the records they need (and are authorized to view). This eliminates lost and misplaced files, reducing the need to create replacement copies.
2. Enabling electronic file distri-bution
The average office makes 19 copies of each document. By scanning paper records and saving them in an elec-tronic format, employees may share and distribute files electronically, cut-ting down on the need to make copies. (Organizational policies should be put in place to discourage printing e-mail attachments and long e-mail reply strings.)
3. Limiting duplicated efforts
ERM’s audit trail functionality tracks changes and revisions to each record, including who created the record and the date the record was cre-ated. This information establishes con-fidence among employees that they are working with the most current, official version of the record, decreasing the need to copy and compare multiple versions of the same file.
In addition to the environmental benefits of reducing paper consump-tion, ERM also encourages recycling. When hardcopy records are scanned and stored electronically, the source documents most often may be
shredded and recycled.
According to the Environ-mental Paper Network’s report, making new paper from recycled s people become more aware
of the impact of human con-sumption on the environ-ment, an increasing number of companies and government organizations are making an effort to promote environmentally friendly policies and procedures. The business benefits associated with tak-ing a “green” approach include:
n Enhanced reputation n More motivated employees n Decreased costs and increased
operational efficiency
As a result, records and informa-tion management (RIM) professionals must be prepared to help reduce their organization’s environmental impact. Leveraging electronic records man-agement (ERM) is one way to achieve this goal.
ERM and the Environment
ERM can support sustainability within your organization by substan-tially reducing the consumption of three key natural resources: trees (paper), fuel, and energy.
Paper
According to the U.S. Environ-mental Protection Agency’s (EPA) frequently asked questions on its web-site at www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/
materials/paper, the average
Amer-ican office worker uses approxi-mately 10,000 sheets of copy paper – roughly 1.25 trees – each year.
The environmental impact of all this paper consumption is sig-nificant. The Environmental Paper Network in a 2007 report, “The State of the Paper Indus-try: Monitoring
A
the Indicators of Environmental Per-formance,” highlighted three sobering facts about paper’s negative impact on the planet:nRoughly 42% of industrial wood
har-vested is used to make paper, thin-ning out the forests that provide one of our most important safeguards against climate change.
nThe paper industry is the
fourth-highest producer of carbon dioxide among manufacturers, contributing approximately 9% of total manufac-turing carbon dioxide emissions.
n After it has been used and thrown
away, paper decomposes and pro-duces methane, a greenhouse gas with 23 times the heat-trapping power of carbon dioxide.
According to the report, if each American office reduced its paper use by roughly 10%, the environmental impact would be equivalent to taking 280,000 cars off the road. With ERM, decreasing paper consumption by 10% is an easily attainable goal by:
1. Eliminating lost and misplaced files
In a 2008 report, “Transition from Document to Digital: Why Document Management is a ‘Must Have’,”
Price-e-mail electronic copies of those records instead.
In addition to the fuel savings asso-ciated with decreased couriering and mailing, ERM also reduces the amount of document storage space organiza-tions must support. This decreases en-ergy costs and the need for new construction. It also reduces fuel con-sumption since employees are no longer forced to drive to offsite storage facilities to retrieve archived records; instead, they have instant access to all authorized organizational electronic records.
Digitizing records may also reduce the number of employees who com-mute to work. For example, ERM has enabled CHMB – a medical billing company located in San Diego, Calif. – to add 150 new employees without re-locating or acquiring additional office space. At the same time, employing telecommuters has increased the qual-ity of CHMB’s staff. According to Ron Anderson, director of business devel-opment at CHMB, “We’re able to at-tract the best people, without geographic limitations, and we find that people who value the flexibility to work from home work harder because they don’t want to lose that perk.”
An employee who commutes to work has an environmental impact in terms of fuel consumption, tire con-sumption, and carbon emissions. By granting employees the ability to se-curely access records from home, ERM removes detrimental effects on the en-vironment while also delivering bot-tom-line business results.
Energy
Considering the amount of energy that is required for computerization and networking, it may come as a
sur-What Is ERM?
Electronic records management (ERM) refers to the tools, technology,
and processes that enable organizations to centrally, securely, and
elec-tronically manage all their records. ERM software allows RIM professionals
to track and store records in a wide variety of formats, including:
n
Imaged documents
n
Electronic documents generated by programs (e.g., Microsoft Office)
nPDFs
n
Scanned and digital photographs
nAudio and video files
n
Output from legacy systems
nPhysical records stored offsite
An ERM system supports the automatic enforcement of consistent,
organization-wide records policies and reduces the cost of regulatory
compliance. It also commonly provides specialized security and auditing
functionality tailored to the needs of RIM professionals, including:
n
Improved efficiency in the storage, retention, and disposition of records
and records series
n
Detailed reports of which records are eligible for transfer, accession, or
destruction
n
Audit trails to track all system activity and the entire life cycle of records
ERM systems should allow organizations to file records according to a
determined scheme, to control the life cycle of records, to retrieve records
based on partial information and to identify records that are due for final
disposition.
Many organizations use DoD 5015.2-STD Electronic Records
Manage-ment Software Applications Design Criteria Standard from the U.S.
Department of Defense (DoD) as a starting point for evaluating their ERM
systems. Knowing a DoD-certified application has been thoroughly tested
against the DoD’s rigorous standards provides a great deal of comfort to
RIM professionals at thousands of organizations across a wide variety of
industries.
paper requires less energy and is a cleaner manufacturing process than making paper from trees. And because it diverts usable paper from the waste stream, recycling reduces solid waste and greenhouse gas emissions when
Last year we saved more than $17,000 just in paper costs.”
Fuel
Transporting physical records con-sumes gasoline and releases carbon
nomic Input-Output Methods” re-vealed that the manufacturing process for the average desktop computer con-sumes 10 times the computer’s weight in fossil fuels and chemicals. And, ac-cording to Gartner, within the next five years most U.S. enterprise data centers will spend as much money on energy as they will on hardware.
So how can electronic recordkeep-ing decrease a company’s energy use? First, it’s important to note that ERM software does not, in itself, re-quire much new hardware. No natural resources need to be consumed when manufacturing new computers or servers, as ERM software can be in-stalled on existing units.
Some organizations may need to purchase one or more scanners, but the environmental impact of manufactur-ing new imagmanufactur-ing units can be offset by:
n Purchasing scanners made with
post-consumer recycled content, which saves energy during the manufacturing process
n Selecting scanners with Energy
Star power management func-tions, which saves energy when the product is used
However, the real energy efficien-cies associated with ERM are realized when an organization implements an intelligent and environmentally friendly policy framework for RIM.
RIM policies can reduce data stage requirements. Whether your or-ganization’s data center occupies one room, one floor, or a 50,000-square-foot building, the energy needed for power and air conditioning is con-siderable. As or-ganizations collect
and store more and more data, the size of these server farms continues to grow. By adhering to an environmen-tally friendly records schedule and promptly disposing of expired records, RIM professionals play a key role in keeping the amount of data housed in server farms under control.
RIM professionals should create a succinct procedure for destroying records that exceed their retention pe-riod. As soon as a record is eligible for disposition, if it is not transferred, it should be destroyed or deleted. This will not only ensure that unnecessary data is not a drain on the organization’s data center, but it will also assist with e-discovery preparation and planning. Furthermore, an ERM solution that enables “transparent records management” decreases the need for general users to clog up the network with duplicate copies of organizational records. Transparent records manage-ment allows records managers and general users to organize simultane-ously the same ERM repository in the manner each prefers. This eliminates the need to save records in multiple lo-cations and cuts down on data storage demands. (See sidebar “More About
Transparent Records Management for additional information.”)
ERM and Organizational Efficiency
By employing ERM, RIM profes-sionals can play a leading role in help-ing their organizations reduce their impact on the environment. However, ERM’s benefits extend far beyond the benefits of going green. In addition to the obvious cost savings that accrue from decreasing the need for paper, fuel, and storage space, ERM pro-motes greater organizational produc-tivity and profitability by increasing the efficiency of employees.
Boosting Productivity and Decreasing Costs
In its 2005 report “Organizations Shift Focus to Information Manage-ment: The Role of Documents in Highly Effective Business Processes,” IDC estimates that employees spend 20% of their time looking for informa-tion in hardcopy documents; 50% of the time they can’t find what they need. With ERM, employees instantly retrieve records without having to leave their desks, allowing them to use their time more productively.
However, retrieval efficiencies are only half the story. Due to the amount of time it takes, classifying and filing records is typically the most expen-sive part of RIM. In many organi-zations, this issue stems from the
following problems:
n The records management
group is understaffed and un-able to manually classify all the content created by the organization.
responsi-ble for creating content are not con-cerned with records retention poli-cies and are not interested in or able to learn a non-intuitive classifica-tion scheme.
Transparent ERM solutions solve this problem by automatically classify-ing documents as they are created. Users responsible for creating content define the document’s type using a re-quired field. The workflow module of the software uses this information to automatically classify the document (i.e., to determine which records man-agement settings should apply) and move it to the appropriate record series or record folder. As a result, cutoff and disposition eligibility dates are auto-matically calculated and assigned.
The workflow module of the soft-ware automates the process of classi-fying and filing records and providing document access to different types of users by:
n Capturing a document into a folder
named “incoming documents.”
n Assigning metadata to the document
to determine its type (e.g., insurance record, tax document, employment application). This information is leveraged to create a record folder in the appropriate record series and move the document into the new record folder. This step provides doc-ument access to records managers.
n Creating a shortcut to the document
and routing it to the content man-agement section of the repository. Users who are not records man-agers can access the document using the shortcut without being ex-posed to the records management layout.
It is the automation afforded by the workflow module that makes this solution such a cost-effective way to
ERM = Greener Environment
As organizations strive to improve efficiency while decreasing their im-pact on the environment, more and more RIM professionals are turning to ERM. ERM can support sustain-ability within an organization by sub-stantially reducing the consumption of paper, fuel, and energy while at the same time improving operational efficiency.
ERM creates a greener, more pro-fessional, and more productive work
environment for organizations across all industries, including Fortune 1,000 companies in the healthcare, fi-nance, construction, and transporta-tion sectors; educatransporta-tional institutransporta-tions; and municipal, county, and state gov-ernment agencies. RIM professionals who have not yet considered adopting ERM should take a closer look.
Chris Wacker can be contacted at
[email protected]. See his
bio on page 39.