Real-Time Usage Analytics for Better Document Retention
Ever since the official announcement of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), organizations across Europe and Asia have taken document retention seriously. Document retention has become a fundamental business process for most entities. While it can be a complex process, it’s an essential component for security and compliance.
It’s prudent to keep track of how your organization retains documents. Without the right data, it will be only a wild guess as to how well your organization follows the outlined processes. The retention process is also critical as it forms part of the essential security and compliance checklist.
One of the most significant challenges that organizations face is the sheer amount of documentation that’s produced daily. Sorting out the necessary information from the irrelevant is a daunting task that needs expertise. Fortunately, technology presents a solution – real-time usage analytics.
Real-time usage analytics provides a suite of tools that will enable your organization to automate the document retention process, improving efficiency, and saving time. With the ever-increasing number of regulations, ensuring compliance has become critical to avoid hefty fines.
To better understand retention, it’s essential to explore the different types of documentation stored by an organization.
1. Legal Documents
Legal documents are significant documents that must be retained for a specific timeframe. These documents include employee contracts, lease agreements, and purchase agreements. Depending on the nature of the document, it can be retained between five to ten years.
2. Operational Documents
Operational documents include financial statements, invoices, client agreements, minutes of meetings, and memos. To comply with most regulations, the documents must be retained for a period of up to seven years.
3. Strategic Documents
Strategic documents are strategy documents such as annual reports and strategic plans. These must be kept for a minimum of five years, depending on the jurisdiction.
4. Financial Documents
Financial documents include receipts and bank statements. Depending on jurisdiction, these documents can be kept for up to seven years.
Real-time usage analytics provides a way to keep track of the different types of documents and regulation requirements. Document retention has, for a long time, been viewed as a back-office function that’s not so significant. However, with regulations and compliance, retention is part of the core business, and companies must ensure that it’s done efficiently.
Document retention is more than just keeping records. It’s a tool that can reduce risk while also saving time and money for your organization. Implementing the right retention strategy underpinned by real-time usage analytics is essential in improving your organization’s efficiency.
A powerful analytics tool should provide your organization’s compliance departments with a way to measure the efficiency of your retention process. You should be able to track how long you store your documents for compliance purposes, how much you should store them, and which documents need to be destroyed.
Real-time usage analytics tools have data dashboards that provide your compliance team with real-time visibility of the retention process. The dashboards should provide the team with graphical insights into the retention schedule, including the statistics of the type of documents or volume stored for regulatory compliance.
A well-functioning dashboard generated by real-time usage analytics has the potential to create efficiencies and savings. It can detect when documents have reached their retention time, making it easier for the compliance team to dispose of them. It can also help track files that are misplaced or need redemption.
A dashboard powered by analytics can help improve overall efficiency in document retention. It can help generate reports for audits and identify gaps in the retention process that require improvement.
Analytics tools also allow the compliance team to set alerts so that they are notified whenever a document passes its retention time. This alert serves as a reminder to reach out to the business unit or line manager to destroy the document or renew the retention plan.
In conclusion, document retention is not just an afterthought but a critical component of your business strategy. Real-time usage analytics provides your organization with an efficient document retention process by tracking the different types of documents and their retention periods. Retention analytics dashboards provide a bird’s eye view of your retention plan, helping companies to refine and improve their retention strategy. Finally, organizations must seek analytics tools that are easy to use and can be customized so that they become part of the document retention process.
Check out HelpRange
Check out our product HelpRange. It is designed to securely store (GDPR compliant), share, protect,
sell, e-sign and analyze usage of your documents.