Technology Updates

1 March 2004
posted by Andrew Clarke

Today with the advances in technology, courts have adapted to change and in certain circumstances are accepting emails and other electronic forms of documents or correspondences as ‘best evidence’ where bone-fide hard copy originals are not available.

In the past when companies were looking for solutions to remove or reduce costs from their business, their first port was to remove old files from their expensive office space and put it into deep storage in a remote warehouse where the price was low and access was minimal. This type of service tended to be used for inactive archival documents, as a low cost method of keeping them safe until the end of their statutory retention period when they could be destroyed. This is the origins of Document Storage.

As legislation and technology came into place requiring businesses and organisations to keep documents as evidence and technology has developed, the need has moved to that of managing information. This sort of active management, so an organisation can quickly and easily locate & retrieve the information it seeks, has proven to offer such organisations competitive advantage in addition to the more obvious benefit of regulatory compliance.

Storing documents is not a simple as putting boxes in an empty warehouse. With the introduction of computers and the electronically created and stored data they have give rise to, we produce more paper records per head of employee than ever before. Companies increasingly find the ‘paperless office’ continues to be a myth though the ‘less-paper’ office is becoming a reality.