By Terry Wieczorek, DocuLynx, Inc.
Compliance continues to one of the hottest buzzword facing high volume transaction output providers — and one of the most complex. As a business responsible for assembling, producing, managing, and delivering high volumes of individualized transaction documents, it is necessary that part of your document strategy includes keeping accurate and secure documentation of both internal and external operations. This involves everything from payroll practices, statements, sales and marketing records, and even data from production procedures. This stored information provides transparency on every aspect of your business and can help you serve your customers more efficiently as well as limiting your exposure should legal or regulatory questions arise.
The importance of developing a document compliance strategy
The very first step in proactively defining and implementing a document compliance strategy is to first research your storage needs. This will provide insight into how long you must keep each type of document while also ensuring transparency measures are in place. Second, you must develop rules for every level of employee, and maybe even customers, to establish who will have access to which documents.
The next step is to decide how you want to store the documents. Will you maintain them in their native form of switch to a PDF archival system? PDF is becoming increasingly popular largely because it ensures that everyone looking at the document will see the same version as the original document. Lastly, it is very important to keep track of each document’s life span and then destroy any document as soon as you are allowed. Removing a document from your archive as soon as legally allowed can save your company from any undue exposure should there ever be an audit.
Maintaining your archiving system
Typically, businesses archive documents to meet the requirements of relevant compliance standards. For example, insurance companies must maintain a copy of a life insurance policy for the customer’s lifetime plus five years. IRS-related documents may have a life cycle of three to five years, while in other industries, seven years may be required.
Some enterprises choose to outsource the handling of their documents to a third party and focus on their core business. A third-parry service provider should have the ability to specialize in archiving services as well as the experienced personnel to help you design and implement a system customized to the requirements of your business and customers.
The bottom line
Regardless of which solution your company chooses, it is essential to stay informed in term of both the software and services surrounding document archiving and compliance requirements. Whether you are an enterprise or trusted service provider, your solution must be scalable, portable, and secure. It must have the ability to process documents quickly while providing both online and offline capabilities. Most importantly, there needs to be sufficient bandwidth to meet your storage requirements for seven years or beyond to maintain compliance.
Continuous change has become the one constant businesses can rely on and every industry has to move fast today to remain responsive and competitive. Keeping in compliance with all applicable standards, and one step ahead of demand, is a critical element to any document strategy.
Terry Wieczorek is president and CEO of DocuLynx, Inc.