In the last 12 years or so that I have been exclusively focused on Records and Information Management (now Information Governance - for me it was always about governance), an image has formed in my mind that I believe sometimes represents Records Managers as they propose funding needs or improvement plans to their leadership, looking for company resources including access to employees, manpower, and funding. What I see is a middle-age, middle sized gentleman, bald on top with wisps of hair on the sides and back of his head, and a thin moustache. He is nervously clutching and fingering the rim of his hat that he holds it in front of him with his head down looking at his shoes. It is almost as if he feels a need to apologize for needing resources to accomplish his business objectives.
Now if your plan is no good and will just consume the company's time and money with no real benefit - OK, I get it - go ahead and hang your head. But if your plan (as it should) will save the company money, improve efficiency, and reduce risk, then hold your head high - you need to go to the front of the line! Most Records Management projects are self-funding, possibly even in the first year. Even if this one is not, it is likely among the highest benefit to cost ratios of all of the funding requests. Let's break it down:
Saving Money:
Storage - Most companies are paying more for storing records than necessary. Whether it is non-business records, duplicates, or records that have fulfilled their retention requirement, there is a lot of potential saving in bringing your records storage into compliance with your Records Retention Schedule (RRS). I digress, but when doing this with my former employer (after upgrading to a best practices RRS) we found 100+ year old personnel records, retired supervisors and managers' office files (it had been the practice to box up all of their office files and send them offsite), coffee pots, and Christmas trees.
Litigation - Discovery costs are driven higher when records that are eligible for disposal are retained. Whether paper or electronic, reducing the volume of records to be searched and reviewed by disposing of expired records, convenience copies, and non-records can reap significant savings.
Improve Efficiency
Creation, Storage, Retrieval and Disposal - Efforts to standardize and facilitate the creation and management of records through their entire lifecycle can reap large dividends. Eliminating (or reducing) personal repositories and establishing official repositories (electronic and paper) where employees are certain to be able to store and retrieve the latest version of records, easily produces a significant impact on productivity. If you are able to save, on average, just 5 minutes out of every hundred for the average employee - that's a 5% savings! Multiply that 5% (actually a low estimate) by your payroll cost, and the potential value in redirected employee's use of time can be staggering! Any projects your company is trying to get off the ground? You may just have released the manpower to make that happen!
Reduce Risk
Elimination - As records complete their lifecycle and fulfill their purpose, they transition from having high value as an asset to becoming a liability. Efforts to promote and facilitate disposal of records per the Records Retention Schedule not only saves the company money as noted above, but also reduces corporate risk. If you have no further use of your records - who are you keeping them for?
Management teams often know they have to do something for Information Governance, but don't know what that something is. Your thoughtful considered plan for improving Information Governance will be like a cool cup of water to a person anguishing with thirst. What you propose is at least a piece of what is sorely needed by the company to efficiently govern its information and records. So hold your head high, look them in the eye, and just for good measure, give them that special little grin that tells them they're going to love hearing what you are about to tell them.
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
In the last 12 years or so that I have been exclusively focused on Records and Information Management (now Information Governance - for me it was always about governance), an image has formed in my mind that I believe sometimes represents Records Managers as they propose funding needs or improvement plans to their leadership, looking for company resources including access to employees, manpower, and funding. What I see is a middle-age, middle sized gentleman, bald on top with wisps of hair on the sides and back of his head, and a thin moustache. He is nervously clutching and fingering the rim of his hat that he holds it in front of him with his head down looking at his shoes. It is almost as if he feels a need to apologize for needing resources to accomplish his business objectives.
