The term records management refers to the job of administrating, identifying, categorizing, and archiving your business records either in paper or electronic form and when necessary eventually destroying them.
It's extremely important for any business to be sure that a record is kept of all of their files.
Without a certain process complete chaos can reign in your office.
Plus precious work time will be lost just by having employees running around searching for documents.
One key element to a well-run company is organization.
A client is more likely to do business with an efficient company than with one where no one can locate anything.
Don't forget that a well organized company is like a well-oiled machine it keeps running without breaking down.
Take a look about your office.
See if records and documents are easily accessible.
If there is less space and more documentation coming in to manage all of this you may wish to arrange for electronically controlled storage for your files.
To properly manage your records make sure that you employees don't have far to go to get to them.
The closer they are to those who need them each day the faster work will get done.
That is why a great time saver is electronic storage because the files can be quickly found at the moment that they are needed.
Make sure that all of your employees are aware of where to find needed records and documents.
The greatest help we have today to properly manage our records is the computer.
Most businesses today already have their records in digital form.
However if at this time you have not gone digital yet then the employee who has been given the task of managing the company records has to keep several things in mind.
A special record keeping system must be developed.
All of the present records should be looked over and a decision made about which records can be archived because they won't be needed for awhile.
The other records must then be set up so that they can be easily accessed by anybody who needs them.
Confidential documents must be labeled as such and placed separately.
Once all the records are filed according to importance take a look at how much space is left because records will grow day by day and you might start considering putting them in digital form for easier storage.
Therefore you should have them classifies as confidential records, administrative records, and records which are needed in the running of the business each day.
If you have them stored for you electronically you can also manage them more easily and there won't be the possibility of them getting lost or destroyed.
Anyway you look at it records management is a very important and vital part of any business and if not managed correctly can make the business inefficient.
A client who has been waiting for an hour for you to locate a certain document and then is told that unfortunately that just won't happen today will certainly take their business elsewhere.