Legal Costs are 20% Higher Than They Should Be

Dec. 1, 2011 - PRLog -- Just 13% of the respondents think their organization already follows best practice in these areas. Over half would have to manually search across file shares, emails and paper records in order to respond to a pre-litigation discovery request. A further cost of poor records-keeping practice is highlighted by the 28% of organizations where records management and security practices have been criticized or exposed by an auditor in the last three years. Perhaps the highest cost to brand and reputation comes for the 4% - one in 25 - who have had their poor practice exposed in the media or press.

This new AIIM research is available at http://www.aiim.org/Research/Industry-Watch/RM-Strategies-2011.

Commenting on these results, Doug Miles, AIIM’s Head of Market Intelligence, said, “Most organizations now realize that they should be managing electronic documents and emails as records, just as they always have done for paper records. Unfortunately, it requires a degree of commitment from the top level and a considerable amount of departmental cooperation to put a suitable records management system in place across the whole business. The benefit is not only that compliance and legal costs come down, but that the accessibility of information goes up – within departments, between departments and for mobile and teleworkers.”

When respondents were asked if their organization has suffered a loss of business or loss of reputation at some time in the past as a result of poor records keeping practices, 6% indicated that it was a frequent occurrence, and a further 21% reported an isolated occurrence. Given the potential impact on these 27% of businesses, and the likely under-reporting from the records managers involved, AIIM considers this to be a strong rationale for improving practices.

The survey results showed that the volume of paper records is decreasing in 41% of organizations, compared to 31% where it is still increasing. This is the first time AIIM has measured a net decrease across all sizes of organization. However, only a third of respondents considered the accessibility of records to employees across their business to be good or excellent.

Based on 720 responses, the AIIM research report is entitled “Records Management Strategies - plotting the changes” and is free to download from the AIIM website.  This new AIIM research is available at http://www.aiim.org/Research/Industry-Watch/RM-Strategies....

Research is underwritten by EMC, Kofax, OpenText, and Viewpointe. AIIM offers online and classroom training in best practice for Electronic Records Management and also promotes the Information Certification qualification.

About the research
The survey was taken by 720 individual members of the AIIM community between Sept 22, 2011, and Oct 11, 2011, using a Web-based tool. Invitations to take the survey were sent via e-mail to a selection of the AIIM worldwide community members.

About AIIM
AIIM is the community that provides education, research and best practices to help organizations find, control and optimize their information. AIIM is international in scope, independent and implementation-focused, acting as the intermediary between ECM (Enterprise Content Management) users, vendors and the channel. http://www.aiim.org

About EMC
EMC Corporation  is the world’s leading developer and provider of information infrastructure technology and solutions that enable organizations of all sizes to transform the way they compete and create value from their information. Information about EMC’s products and services can be found at http://www.EMC.com.

About Kofax
Kofax plc (LSE: KFX) is the leading provider of capture driven process automation solutions. Kofax solutions provide a rapid return on investment by automating information intensive processes and by managing the capture of information in a more accurate, timely and cost effective manner. Visit http://www.kofax.com.

About OpenText
OpenText®, a global ECM leader, helps organizations manage and gain the true value of their business content. Working with our customers and partners, we bring together leading Content Experts™ to help organizations capture and preserve corporate memory, increase brand equity, automate processes, mitigate risk, manage compliance, and improve competitiveness. http://www.opentext.com

About Viewpointe
Viewpointe® is a leading provider of multibank infrastructure solutions for customers ranging from credit unions to Fortune 100 financial institutions. With one of the largest national archives of check images and digital information in a private cloud environment, Viewpointe offers archive capabilities, end-to-end check image exchange and ACH services. http://www.viewpointe.com.

For more information, contact:
Doug Miles
Director, Market Intelligence
+44.1905.727600
dmiles@aiim.org

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AIIM is the community that provides education, research, and best practices to help organizations find, control, and optimize their information.