Legacy Data and Paper Disposition Services

STRATEGIC	FOUNDATIONAL				EXECUTION			MANAGEMENT
Maturity Assessment & Strategic Roadmap	Records/Data Retention Policy & Schedule Data Security Classification Policy	AI Governance Privacy Program	Discovery Response & Legal Hold	Governance Processes and Procedures	Data Placement & Automation	Behavior Change Management & Training	Legacy Document & Data Disposition	Ongoing Management & Monitoring
Information Governance Organizational Development

Email Remediation

Development and execution of strategy to identify and defensibly delete older, non-record emails and other semi-structured information. This includes engaging key stakeholder to understand current practices, and identification of requirements for management of email, creation of an Email Configuration and Deletion Decision Matrix, identifying categories for measuring records currently being retained only in email, user behaviors, volume/size, type and age of current email, developing Future State, developing programmatic and user-based disposition strategies, and developing of email retention audit processes.

File Remediation

Development and execution of strategy to identify and defensiblydelete older, expired records, non-record and low-value files and other unstructured information. Includes assessment of existing unstructured data repository, development of File Configuration and Deletion Decision Matrix, user behaviors, volume/size, type and age of current email, developing Future State, developing programmatic and user-based disposition strategies, and developing of email retention audit processes.

Paper Records Inventory and Clean-up

Inventory, classification and defensible disposition processes for inactive onsite and offsite paper records. Development standard processes and procedures for record owners, records managers and teams to inventory and dispose existing collections of inactive paper records. Includes development of a recommended plan for conducting a paper records inventory, including processes, forms/worksheets, instructions/job aids, and training materials. Executes a pilot on-site triage and disposition exercise. Allows employees to understand and apply the retention records schedule, as it applies to inactive paper records, including the organization of boxed records for retention according to the retention periods, and destruction of paper records that are no longer needed for any legal or business purpose. Fractional records manager staffing available to execute processes.

Offsite Storage Vendor Audit and Agreement Restructuring

Audits offsite record storage agreements and assists clients in assure vendor adherence to contractual terms. Analyzes and audits offsite records storage vendor contracts against actual usage and identify over-billing or overpayments. Assesses current and future offsitepaper retention needs, and using this data restructures agreements with more favorable terms.

Top Three Legacy Data and Paper Disposition Resources

Reducing Your Offsite Paper Storage Risk and Cost

How to Delete Emails and Files Defensibly

Questions Every Organization Needs to Answer for Legacy Document and Data Disposition

How much older, unneeded email are we retaining? Do any of these emails contain any records? Are any of these emails under legal hold?
How much of our files and unstructured information is low business value, duplicates or expired records?
Where is our unstructured data being stored?
What types of active records are being stored in these unstructured repositories?
How do we defensibly delete the unneeded files?
How do we engage the business units for deleting older information?
How do we demonstrate our deletion processes are defensible?
What paper records do we have both onsite and at offsite storage vendors?

How many boxes of expired and inactive records are we holding?
How do develop defensible repeatable paper disposition processes? How do we make these processes scalable? Do we have to review every document in every folder to have a compliant disposition process?
How do we create standardized, easy-to-follow processes for identifying and destroying expired paper records?
Is the billing from our offsite records vendors accurate and in line with our contract terms?
How do we restructure our agreements with offsite vendors to reduce costs and better enable removal and destruction of expired records?
Have we recently conducted a privacy training?

Contoural’s Approach to Legacy Data and Paper Disposition

While emails, files and paper records are the lifeblood of an organization persistent, ongoing over accumulation of this electronic and paper information drives up costs, increases risks and hurts employee productivity. Contoural provides services that utilize proven strategies used by many organizations to tame their growing piles of unneeded information. Taking a smart, real-world approach, combining policies, process and the appropriate use of technology enables organizations to save the right information for the, while at the same time deleting and not letting low-value, unneeded information accumulate.

Aggressive Deletion Doesn’t Work

Frustration by legal and senior management with employees’ “save everything forever” mentality can boil over resulting in an “aggressive deletion” strategy that employs automated deletion programs across file shares and email inboxes as well as deleting older files or any emails older than 60 or 90 days. Although also well intentioned, this strategy can quickly backfire. When companies start an “aggressive” email deletion process, employees often react with a counter behavior of “underground archiving.” In a bid to save their emails from deletion, employees save emails on desktops, laptops, centralized file servers, USB drives, and other unauthorized areas. Aggressive deletion strategies not only do not work, but they also tend to drive the saving of emails and files in unauthorized, unsecure and hard to access areas, simply increasing the risks and costs of over retention.

Deleting Emails and Files When You Move to the Cloud

Many companies are moving from on-premise storage of their emails and files to cloud-based systems. This switch to cloud-based systems is an excellent opportunity to clean up old emails and files. First, identify all the information to be migrated. Do not necessarily assume that everything stored on the old system should be moved to the new systems. Next, instead of simply dumping straight from the old file system into the cloud storage, set up the appropriate folders that are configured with the appropriate retention period. Once everything is set up move the selected older content into its new location. Doing this type of “smart migration” does require some pre-planning and configuration ahead of time. Avoid the temptation to simply throw everything up into the cloud and planning on sortingit out later. The benefit of thinking this through is two-fold: first, it can clean up and greatly reduce the amount of emails and files. Second, by configuring the cloud system with appropriate retention, moving forward there will be much less accumulation of information.

Reasonable Disposition Targets

How much email, files and paper records can be defensibly deleted? This depends on the age and size of the organization, as well as if the organization has suffered from a “hoarding” culture. In general, most organizations significantly over retain information. For email, anywhere from 40% to 80% of emails being stored are unneeded, low value or duplicative information that can be deleted. For files and unstructured information between 30% to 60% typically can be deleted. Paper record over retention varies from 20% all the way up to 80%, depending on how consistently or inconsistently paper records have been managed and organizations can expect to delete more than 40% of their emails and files. This deletion requires a focused approach. However, even companies that initially believe that they are beyond hope because “our employees save everything forever” can expect to defensibly delete large amounts of unneeded information

Recovering Vendor Overbillings

Detecting invoice errors can be a daunting task requiring specialized skills and sometimes even a legal background as contracts need to be matched to invoices, which are multi-page and contain itemized details. The business function reviewing invoices needs detailed knowledge of contract provisions to determine the accuracyof charges. Note that box management activity is billed in arrears and storage is billed in advance. Both are on the same invoice. Vendor invoicing practices can make it challenging to check for accuracy and contract compliance. Depending on the situation, conducting an audit on detailed invoicing can be extremely time consuming and complex. For some customers, one department may manage the billing, other groups may request records retrieval, and another group may be responsible for ensuring expired records are destroyed. Unless these various factions are in close communication, this complexity makes it difficult to audit bills and ensure invoices are correct. The result is that though erroneous, invoices are simply paid without review or scrutiny.

Offsite Vendor Stranded Boxes

Most organizations discover that 40% (or more) of their paper documents are either redundant, obsolete or trivial (in that those records need not be retained) or have been kept past their retention schedule date. Other audits have also found a variety of inappropriate records being stored and billed. Examples include paper cups, employee files from over 50 years ago (often with inappropriate comments), books and reference materials for equipment such as punched-card readers, foam toys and other giveaways from trade shows, etc. In short, companies pay offsite vendors millions of dollars per month for content that shouldn’t have been stored in the first place.

Reducing Offsite Storage Costs with Contract Restructuring

The contract and billing complexity puts companies at a disadvantage when it comes to renegotiating contracts and by extension, their actual costs. When contracts are negotiated, there is great emphasis placed on the “per box” cost, yet this is only 20% of the total cost, with the remaining 80% composed of copious ancillary management and maintenance fees. More important, vendors have access to internal information about these processes that generate those ancillary fees. They can accurately determine how to optimize profits by offering seemingly large, yet insignificant, discounts on certain fees while slightly increasing repetitive fees.