Meeting New and Emerging Requirements for Compliance with RecordPoint and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Records Management has gone from the basement to the boardroom almost overnight, dramatically raising the awareness of, and need for, better corporate governance and records management. Blame it on the explosive growth in the volume of records, and a spate of recent epidemic  blunders (Australian Wheat Board, Enron, Arthur Andersen, etc.) which have given rise to landmark litigation and compliance deadlines. The highly publicized missteps of several notable companies and the consequences (in the form of lawsuits, fines and even jail terms) have brought records management and corporate accountability to centre stage, particularly in the areas of electronic recordkeeping and email storage.

For decades, records management -- the caretaking of important documents, files, contracts, films and even some physical objects -- has been almost taken for granted. Over the years, businesses and government agencies have relied upon traditional tools such as filing cabinets, file folders, barcodes and off-site storage facilities to meet their records management requirements. Many companies have even dabbled with first- and second-generation electronic records management solutions.

However, many of these so-called “leading” records management solutions do not solve the key records management problems that exist today, and they lack the flexibility to address changes in records management as it evolves. Moreover, these solutions have traditionally placed the onus on users to make important decisions about records, inherently compromising records management enforcement, and in turn, overall records management and compliance. These systems are costly, inefficient, create legal exposure and ultimately fail.

As organizations struggle to get a grip on today’s compliance problems, one thing is clear. Records management policy should be enforced via process and technology -- not people. Business records storage services must be driven by structured, time-tested, and repeatable processes that are backed by sophisticated and scalable automation. Indeed, addressing today’s new records management challenges requires a third-generation solution to help manage the processes and content involved in compliance and records management.

RecordPoint and Microsoft SharePoint have been designed to solve today’s process-oriented enterprise records management and compliance needs. Its innovative process based approach and use of Microsoft technology automates the majority of records management decisions to ensure adherence to records management policy. This enables companies to leverage their human resources when and where they add the most value, and reduce both cost and error potential to ensure records policy enforcement and lower the cost of administration.