The Surprising Benefits of Being Organized

A Holistic Records Management System

You may already be aware of how proper data governance can drastically cut down on the time and money spent performing regular data cleanup projects, but there are also additional benefits that don’t receive the same attention. Much like how keeping a clean living-space can reduce stress and increase productivity, keeping your file shares organized may help to reduce costs and increase efficiency with respect to privacy, eDiscovery, divestiture, and analytics projects.

Privacy

By properly organizing your organization’s data, you may also be protecting your data from additional privacy risks. It is generally prudent to only maintain the records that are necessary and relevant to your company and pertinent regulatory requirements. Curating and deleting the data that falls outside of this scope can reduce liability and risk from PII (personally identifiable information) or other sensitive information being exposed. Using a system that can locate and remediate this data based on both the metadata and content can simplify the process and ensure defensible deletion practices are maintained.

eDiscovery

Another added benefit of maintaining an organized data governance system is that it greatly reduces the time and effort required for eDiscovery. Instead of the traditional method of combing through the multitudes of files and folders preserved in disparate data silos, you can instead opt for a different approach. By indexing all the data beforehand, you can reduce the time required for both collection and review periods.

Divestiture, Mergers and Acquisitions

With many companies’ having their data either residing in one giant repository or spread across several different storage systems spanning on-premises, cloud or hybrid environments, it is vital to apply proper data governance policies. These issues become even more apparent when a company is in the process of going through a major change like a divestiture. As Deloitte explains, “divestitures aren’t just mergers in reverse—they’re complicated, counter-intuitive transactions that include carve-outs, spin-offs, liquidations, split-offs, exchanges, and tracking stocks.” This process requires a deep understanding of the data found within an organization to properly assess and manage each step of a divestiture process. Similarly, M&A requires due diligence which may include things like intellectual property, human resources and other information that can only be assess by examining the organization’s unstructured data.

Analytics

Besides the added benefits we’ve discussed, another noteworthy advantage of good data governance is the ability to leverage the data for analytical purposes. Without an established data governance system it would be impossible to use unstructured data—emails, files, and collaboration platforms, and IMs—in a way that would provide managers or executives additional business insight. Using a system that catalogs the data in one searchable repository makes the process of mining actionable intelligence that much easier. Tagging and classifying files using the metadata and content found after indexing can provide a much clearer picture of how your organization functions.

Learn from Experts

The common thread that binds each instance and others that were not mentioned, is the value of proper data governance in your holistic records management system. Having a system in place that benefits all the interconnected business activities listed can prove to be indispensable.

The process mentioned at the beginning follows the Files Management Framework, which organizations can use to guide their files governance efforts. To learn more on how to implement in-place file management, watch our recorded webinar where ZL Tech experts discuss the files framework and how our software can be used to manage file shares.

analytics eDiscovery File Analysis file cleanup file management privacy storage

Rafael Walden is a graduate of Portland State University and current solutions consultant at ZL Tech.