New Year, New You: Storage Solutions for Your Busine Resolutions by Ren Grajales

For many of us, New Year's resolutions are as much a ritual as Auld Lang Syne at midnight or a spoonful of black-eyed peas the next day. One study, from the University of Scranton, says that about half of all Americans make a New Year's vow to improve their lives; it's usually all about shedding weight or saving money.

So how do you make those earnest resolutions stick? Psychologist John C. Norcross, who conducted the Scranton study, cites two main ingredients for success: a firm desire to change and a detailed plan to support the transformation.

If you're considering a fresh personal direction in 2015, why not extend the effort to your business? By taking three simple steps, you can reduce clutter, dispose of records properly, and ensure your most important documents and data are safe.

Step #1: Get your office back by losing unwanted pounds (of paper).

Although you may have accumulated so much clutter during the last year that you don't even see it anymore, keeping boxes in your workspace isn't the best use of your valuable square footage.

A trusted partner can schedule regular document pickups before they overwhelm your office. The benefits of whisking all of that paper to a secure, climate-controlled facility go beyond simply making your surroundings more visually appealing. Once they're consolidated under one roof, documents can be:

Tagged, indexed, and classified for quick and easy retrieval for audit or legal purposes

Combined (electronic and paper) into one searchable storage system

Step #2: Brush up on the classics-and compliance issues.

Are you scared to part with any records, due to uncertainty about what you are legally required to keep? It's a legitimate concern. For example, most states can impose fines of hundreds or thousands of dollars on a firm that fails to provide an ex-employee access to his or her personnel files within a designated time period.

To ease such pressures, work with a partner who knows standard disposition schedules and can provide a chain of custody that documents the destruction process. Also be sure to ask if a potential vendor has AAA certification from the National Association for Information Destruction (NAID). If it does, you'll know that anyone who touches your sensitive records has undergone a background check.

Step #3: Embrace the cloud before the storm.

We all hope that the new year will be full of triumphs and good fortune. However, a man-made or natural catastrophe could spur a major equipment malfunction or throw an unprepared company out of commission (or even out of business). Imagine suddenly lacking access to much-needed records, invoices and customer data.

When you establish a disaster preparedness plan that includes cloud-based backup and storage, you're gaining valuable peace of mind. An expert provider can deduplicate (eliminate copies), compress, and encrypt your company's essential information. It can then go to an offsite data center, where it will remain accessible on demand via a secure Internet connection.

A Final Word of Encouragement

Change is difficult, but just a few small steps in the right direction can build momentum for even greater improvements. If you follow our blueprint for a better 2015 for your business records, it's possible that you can use that success to achieve your personal goals too.

LINK:	http://blogs.ironmountain.com/2015/uncategorized/new-year-new-you-stor...
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