Global tech organization boosts its records management efforts

Industry

Technology

Challenge

While this global technology infrastructure organisation had a records retention schedule in place, there was no formal staff or centralised tracking system to manage it on a global scale. As a result, it needed assistance ensuring each country was following the records policy and schedule.

Solution

Iron Mountain Dedicated Professional Staffing

Outcome

• Implemented Enterprise IM Policy and Research Center
• Processed all global records disposal and IT asset disposition
• Collated records into a centralised management repository
• Resulted in 85% of legacy records mapped, coded, and uploaded to formal system

Managing records is a lot of work. And when an organisation has been around for a while, that process only becomes more complex. Those who reach enterprise level have the added pressure of coordinating records management across disparate departments, through mergers and acquisitions, and on a global scale. Over the course of several decades, this global technology infrastructure company accumulated nearly half a million customers from around the world. With its ability to adapt to the ever-changing tech landscape, this company’s core offerings touch nearly every aspect of today’s businesses. This success, however, resulted in an expanding records and information (RIM) organisation.

Years of no centralised records system creates disorganisation and inefficiency

This organisation had a records management policy and retention schedule but no formal records and information staff to support and enforce it. To keep track of every file, the company used one tracking tool in the United States and various spreadsheets across all other countries—all of which were being managed by various onsite facilities managers. Each country managed its own vendors, storage, destruction, IT asset disposition, and more. When business lines ran out of physical room in their offices, facilities managers were called in to arrange records transportation and storage. This resulted in:

• Lack of secure record handling training and vendor management
• No singular cohesive management process
• Minimal visibility into record locations
• Risks to sensitive business, customer, or partner information
• Inability to determine patterns or trends from records data
• Lack of clarity on how to clean up legacy records
• Slower purchase order and billing/invoice management

Streamlining records management with dedicated temporary staff

When this organisation acquired another tech company, there were thousands of files that came with that. And with a records and information management system of its own in disarray, this organisation was under water

Iron Mountain was already an established partner of the newly acquired organisation, so it was only natural for this customer to turn to Iron Mountain for overall professional staffing support. Here, an onsite records manager with four remote senior records analysts were brought onboard to support the records and information management needs for 170,000 employees. Through this new onsite staffing solution, this organisation was able to:

• Consolidate records to one vendor per country
• Implement an annual paper disposal and IT asset disposition schedule
• Enable global management including records searching and tracking
• Authorise global legal and tax holds as needed
• Establish schedule for global records destruction
• Implement a comprehensive global records training programme for employees

Rim support staff boosts operational efforts

Over the course of 13 years, Iron Mountain’s dedicated records and information management professionals worked alongside this organisation’s employees. Through continuous and detailed work, this organisation was provided with the proper staff, tools, and training for a successful RIM system.

Here are a few of the benefits this customer experienced:

• Cost savings from records being identified and defensibly destroyed
• Closed dormant accounts and consolidated accounts and vendors from acquired companies
• Ensured one vendor per country under one purchase order, resulting in fewer billing issues
• Created required metadata for all new records sent offsite

With Iron Mountain Dedicated Professional Staffing, you’ll have trained and screened RIM professionals working alongside you to implement and administer your programme. With years of experience in best practices, policy management, and consistent implementation, Iron Mountain can help you achieve a compliant and effective RIM programme.

Learn more about Dedicated Professional Staffing services from Iron Mountain.