As every business entity enters the era of digitization, the practices of records management have also evolved as technology progresses. Many firms that are up against managing huge piles of documents in their shelves are now heavily relying on the services of record management companies. These archiving repositories operate in compliance with international standards and set of protocols to ensure the safety of businesses history and records retention.
What is Record?
All Information generated, sent and received within a company is potentially a record. A record may either be in physical form or digital format. The list below exemplifies the types of both physical and electronic records that every business usually deals with during day to day operation.
- Emails
- Company’s portfolio papers
- Reports
- Minutes
- Databases
- Letters
- Photographs
- Faxes
- Spreadsheets
- Policy and briefing papers
- Employee’s contract papers
- Partnership papers
- Tax papers
In fact, digitization is a real thing happening; however, going completely paperless is not yet obvious. Managers in every organization come to deal with paperwork on a daily basis. Though some of the papers may end up going to wastebasket—others are considered essential and needed to be stored for the future. Therefore, record management is as important activity as inventory management for every organization. Firms associated with record management services make sure that every document that may have some future value for the client’s firm needs to be protected. Thus, with modern day tools like bar code and other electronic record keeping software, the record management companies promise complete record security, developing mutual trust and maintaining a long term relationship with businesses. In addition, whenever an organization needs a document, the archiving company can simply trace and retrieve it for the client without much time and effort being put into it.
There are several reasons that support the need for quality record management services in Pakistan. Unlike many countries, Pakistan which is gradually equipping itself with state of the art technologies to meet the demands of both public and private sector enterprises in this digital transformation. Record archiving entities in Pakistan are also not lagging behind in providing innovative solutions to business with bulk documentations.
Many well-run businesses choose the record management entities because it makes life easy for managers to get rid of folders full of documents by moving them to a secure offsite or onsite warehouse. However, these documents may not be useless at all. Companies may need to call back any document in the future for many purposes like legal, accountability, contracts and partnership deeds against any possible lawsuit.
Apart from sorting and managing records, archiving companies ensure;
Records Security
Security is the first and foremost factor in record management that helps archiving repositories to establish trust based relationship with clients. Many offsite record management facilities are laced with every tool that ensures record safety.
- Biometric Check-in
- Onsite Surveillance Cameras
- Fire and Smoke Detection Sensors
- Safe Packaging
- Secure Back in Forth Shipment
Ease of Retrieval
As mentioned before, companies that entrust archiving repositories for their record management is because they make recovery convenient. Managers don’t need to consume a lot of time searching for a document in the rack full of files. Therefore, archiving companies can pinpoint any required documentation within a fraction of time and deliver it back to the client either in hard or soft form.
Eliminating Redundancies
Archiving companies do eliminate multiple copies of the same file which makes the record management process more efficient, easily manageable and cost-effective.
Record Digitization
Apart from managing physical record, archiving agencies also offer the services of converting physical records into digital formats. Electronic record-keeping has many advantages. For instance, ease of access from anywhere in the world, easily transferable via any electronic medium and lifetime safety of the record.
Many such archiving agencies have also developed their own search engines. Which means no manual searching is needed for any file that is digitally stored in electronic repository. One can get into any file instantly through centralized search engine.
Additionally, digitization of documents reduces storage cost as it occupies less space compared to physical record storage.
Space Saving
Managers are not supposed to feel suffocated while working at their offices with loads of unnecessary documents on their desks and drawers. All those files that are not frequently used in business operations must not make offices look messy and disorganized. Thus, record management companies allow their clients to ship such documents to record archiving agency and regain the office capacity and spaciousness.
Record Digitization
CocoFax, is an online faxing tool, meant for exceptional security and regulatory compliance features. Some businesses still rely on faxes for their business communications and documents sharing, such as banks, corporates, law firms, CocoFax is such a goldmine for these businesses.
Conclusion
Simply put records management companies ensure that organizational records of vital history and legal value are identified and preserved either in an onsite or offsite facility. Record management facilities store both in physical as well as electronic format of the records which makes the tracking and retrieval process more convenient when needed. Furthermore, such agencies are liable to provide records security by following international sets of guidelines.
