What are the benefits of records management?
The records management function should impact across the whole organisation and not be confined to one central department. Due to its far reaching nature integrating the records management function into an organisation's business systems, processes and culture often requires a significant amount of resources.
Most organisations will commonly expect to derive benefits from resources invested; benefits can be described as the expected returns or improvements gained by an organisation from such an investment. Within the context of this review benefits can be usefully classified as either being tangible or intangible in nature.
Tangible benefits are those that can be quantified and are generally articulated in terms of measurable improvements or cost savings. An example of a tangible benefit would be a reduction in space required to store physical paper copies. As a general rule tangible benefits are expressed in monetary terms for inclusion in business cases, the above example could be expressed as the costs saved from no longer requiring the storage space, they can also however be quantified in other ways for example: achieving a 20% reduction in CO2 emissions from reduced electronic storage.
Intangible benefits are non-quantifiable improvements to an organisation. Examples of intangible benefits might include improved standards of corporate governance or ensuring legal compliance. One could argue that by meeting statutory obligations one is avoiding legal costs but this can be problematic to quantify. If a benefit is to be quantified the metric needs to be robust, realistic and meaningful.
The benefits synonymous with records management are well understood and often repeated. These commonly include
Intangible benefits
effective compliance with the 8 data protection principles
effective compliance with freedom of information and other information-related legislation
demonstrating the authenticity of records to increase the evidential weight for legal admissibility
improved decision-making and policy formation supported by reliable information
increased accountability by providing reliable records of actions and decisions
improved innovation and creativity through enhanced corporate knowledge management
efficient collaborative working
Tangible benefits
increased efficiency in retrieval of records
increased efficiency in receipt and fulfilment of customer orders
reduced storage costs associated with keeping only required records
reduced storage costs moving from paper-based to electronic storage
reduced storage costs associated with offsite storage
reduced consumable costs associated with less paper-based records
increased productivity associated with automation of information related tasks and use of document templates
reduced staff costs due to efficient performance of information related tasks
