With the constant increase in the types of information assets held across an organization – from legal filings, Word docs, PDFs, video, spreadsheets, email and more – the control, management and governance of these assets has become an ever-increasing challenge. Finding the right solutions to solve or minimize these challenges and to make the most of related opportunities is a goal many organizations are pursuing.
So, in a world of constantly growing digital footprints, where can such a solution start? Understanding what data assets are held poses the first hurdle. Many different channels capture and process different types of information into different repositories, which leads to data duplication.
To more effectively manage the process of maintaining all this information and ensuring it’s consistent, the simplest solution is to hold all of the data in a single repository. This repository can then act as a hub for an organization’s data, creating efficiencies in storage, minimizing duplication and offering a simpler structure for maintaining and enforcing security around data.
Centrally storing digitized assets will pay multiple dividends. One among many? Reducing the need to store all that paper. According to Iron Mountain, organizations spend 5% of their budgets on filing. It costs $25,000 in labor and materials to fill a four-drawer file cabinet and another $2,000 just to maintain it every year.
Understanding your data: After collating and structuring the data, the next hurdle is understanding exactly what is held and whether it’s held correctly. Regulations dictate that data should not be held for too long, that data should be removed or alternatively held for legal reasons, and never removed while required. The single repository should provide mechanisms for the correct retention of data and having the data in a structured repository simplifies the process of managing this.
However, this is only effective if you know what data is held. Traditionally, document management systems are very good at giving an organization an understanding of what data is present, but aren’t as good at analyzing gaps in the data. Do you have up-to-date documents? Do you have the necessary data to perform a process? Do you have sufficient documents where a process calls for multiple documents of a particular type?
Here’s where it’s important to adopt a system that can provide this level of information around held data, allowing individual processes to run more effectively and giving a high-level compliance overview of how data is managed in the organization.
What does a good content management solution/single source of truth look like?
To achieve a single source of truth, you need an effective content management solution. Content management is the process for collection, retrieval, delivery, governance and overall management of any type of information in any format. And effective content management for a legal department includes:
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Centralized storage and tracking for files, matter and case information.
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Out-of-the-box capability to associate documents with individual matters or matter types.
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Stringent security measures; only the people assigned to the matters should have access to view, access or copy certain documents.
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Full-text searching for easy location and retrieval of content.
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Version control so you only see the right version at the right time.
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Support for all document and format types, including video and audio.
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The ability to store templates for standard forms, letters and reports.
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Individual user empowerment to easily find and consume content without thinking about where to look.
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The ability to easily package various documents related to a matter or invoice.