Record Management Implementation: A Major Fortune 50 Financial Organization

The Client

Major Fortune 50- Financial Organization

The Project

Record Management System Business Requirements and Implementation

The Business Challenge

Meeting stringent regulatory standards, tracking records through their lifecycles, merging paper and electronic records media and creating audit trails has become an increasingly complex activity for this organization

Background

Our Client is a major financial institution based in New York. By the end of 2002, our client had so much of its basic data stored on paper and microfiche that retrieval had become a nightmare, costing data processing staff literally dozens of man-hours per week. This was at a time when major upgrades had truly modernized most of the rest of the company's computer systems. With each passing week, the contrast between the efficiencies elsewhere and the problems with handling the core data became more glaring. It was obvious something needed to be done.

Managers looked at several options but quickly settled on designing a system that would provide the optimum combination of ease of access and strong search and retrieval capabilities. Ten months after completion of the System, our client had stored and indexed data from several million pages of files.

The Solution

Wability worked with our client to establish a record management system that will reorganize the client’s data and retrieval processes, including the complete lifecycle of all of corporate records and information holdings, whether they are documents in paper or electronic format or physical objects such as CD-ROMs or videocassettes, based on the specific record management needs.

The process involved a multi-phased approach, beginning with the gathering of business requirements. During this phase Wability worked in a partnered approach, developing a record management self-evaluation guide, a records inventory sheet, a records disposition document, (to determine retention requirements) storage requirements and scheduling and archival procedures.

Phase two of the project entailed the design and implementation of a Web-based application that provides the ability to apply records management classifications to objects in a repository, as well as to physical objects that are represented by records in the repository.

The system enables records managers to create and maintain record series identifiers, records management database tables, retention and disposition schedules, and records management classifications, as well as providing them with the ability to audit the circulation (check-in/check-out) of all physical objects and to run predefined reports, such as Classification, Recall Listing, and Disposition reports.

The system also provides the ability to perform disposition searches and to place "holds" on items, as well as providing for integration, which allows records management classifications to be applied to items in the repository.
 

The Benefits

The system successfully met with the client’s stringent records management requirements. Some of the benefits realized were:

• Secure access to all record repositories through a Web browser.

• Ensured integrity of all business-critical knowledge.

• Reduced costs for implementation and deployment.

• Quick and easy access to corporate data.

• Increased value of corporate information with highly descriptive metadata.

• Provided the ability to perform a powerful search, collaboration, scheduling and workflow services.