Did you know that the month of April is Records and Information Management Month? What a great time to think about organizing and doing some spring cleaning with your company’s data shares and applications.
One way to organize stored information and allow staff or clients to collaborate is to have a server-based share or line of business application. Like any document management system, over time, the amount of data can grow to an unwieldly size and ultimately become less organized than desired. Having a policy that clearly spells out your document management structure will give your employees a simple tool that they can follow to ensure the organization remains consistent. However, like any system, document management will require the occasional clean up.
One key issue we see with our clients is failure to consider old data, it is very important to consider old data and its impact on document management. Sometimes, there is old data that cannot be removed due to compliance reasons. Sometimes, there is old data that can be removed, this data should be recognized and eliminated, as it not only causes more clutter and difficulty to find what you may be looking for, but it can impact the performance of applications and will significantly increase the size of your company’s backup — resulting in an additional expense. It is amazing what we have found when assisting our valued clients in cleaning up their systems. While you may expect to find records that are old enough to remove or the occasional personal file from former employees, we often find employees personal vacation photos, family videos, and music libraries, which are all, as we say, huge space hogs.
If your company is storing business data in a share, it is important to have:
- A policy that governs naming conventions for both folders and files.
- A plan to handle current work and things that can be archived.
- A way to know what can be eventually purged.
Depending on the type and size of a business, using a line of business application to store and organize information can be an amazing time saver. These applications help employees stay and be better organized, allow for more control over the data entered, and make the search for a particular item much easier.
We cannot discuss data storage without mentioning the importance of a good backup. A company may have the best system to stay organized and policies to keep it that way, but they are one CryptoLocker virus away from losing it all if they do not have a good backup system in place to restore it when disaster strikes.
If you have questions or concerns about your company’s data storage or backup needs, give us a call for a free consultation.