Compliance With Regulations Under Enterprise Content Management Systems
In today’s business scenario, one major item of cost is complying with government regulations. Government agencies require that the business keep records about certain matters, in certain formats and for certain periods.
The typical approach to compliance is to treat it as a special project, complete the “formalities” and try to forget about it. The problem with this approach is that you are simply not allowed to forget about it. New regulations require compliance with new formalities.
The project approach also increases compliance costs, particularly in the context of proliferating compliance requirements. If you ignore these requirements you land in even greater trouble, often disrupting your whole business.
Optimizing compliance costs is best done by following a different approach:
- Adopt the kind of business practices that the government is trying to enforce through the compliance requirements
- Incorporate the compliance requirements when designing the regular business records
With the above approach, you could meet both business and compliance requirements on a continuing basis with a minimum of extra costs.
This approach requires that specialists in business-related laws be associated with the IT and records management teams that design the systems. Enterprise Content Management must develop strategies in the areas of records management and business process management that incorporate the requirements of law.
The aim is to ensure that legal requirements regarding business practices and records maintenance are met in the course of the ECM system operations. This is easier under the wide reach of ECM than in an environment of compartmentalized functional and departmental systems.
For example, unstructured documents can now be sent to a secure repository instead of to a local desktop, as when Enterprise Content Management systems send emails that are (probably automatically) recognized as records to the records management system.
The records management functionality provided with the ECM can be invoked to specify how long each class of record (or an instance) should be kept. This can be done automatically, when a document is declared as record, or later with minimal human intervention.
Litigation Issues
Litigation typically involves reviews of records by multiple law firms. If these records are maintained in different repositories, there is a possibility of inconsistencies that can lead to heavy costs. Delays in producing the records can also have similar effects.
Enterprise Content Management systems store all content in a common repository with a uniform structure. This repository comes with improved findability of records and greater security for the contents. These are particularly relevant for unstructured content, which might otherwise be very difficult to discover and authenticate. ECM thus improves both the speed of discovery and its consistency, with resultant significant lowering of litigation-related costs.
The records management functionality can also help in disposing off records that have completed their retention periods, in an automatic fashion if so desired. This could help remove evidence that might prove damaging if kept. Clear policies and procedures can document the fact that destruction of records has taken place strictly according to policy, and not in order to spoil evidence.
One of the key advantages offered by Enterprise Content Management system is that it makes compliance with regulations easier and less expensive. It is easier under ECM to incorporate the requirements of law into business processes as well as records management and thus comply with law in the regular course of operations. ECM also helps in e-Discovery in litigation.