Page 52 - Information Management 3rd Edition

Information Management
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3.4.2
one year – all correspondence, for example, unsuccessful job applications,
five years
tax receipts, guarantee documents, six years – cancelled cheques and contracts with clients and suppliers, seven years – all human resources documents, ten years – tax receipts sent in by stockbrokers, twelve years – share transactions from listed companies, fifteen years – accounting documents and registers, and
indeterminable period – permanent registration documents, personnel documents of senior members of staff.
– The control of document storage – File documents immediately when they have been dealt with. Always file documents chronologically and maintain the index.
– The control of information retrieval – Make use of labels and guides. In the case of centralised filing, establish a procedure for information retrieval. Make use of out-cards once a document has been removed.
– The control of the destruction of documents – The physical space to store all documents will not always be sufficient. Therefore, every business will have to shred files on a regular basis. It is good practice to file only essential, important and useful documents. Another solution to the space problem is to clean out files regularly. Make use of a schedule to do this. When doing this, take the type of the documents into consideration, for
Pexample, cratalogues can be t-hrownpaway if neuw ones arribve. Essential and important documents should be stored permanently and will never be destroyed. The recommended time for storing essential and important documents should be determined by each business. To destroy documents safely, use a paper shredder.
The following periods are the usual time periods for the retention of documents:
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The electronic document management system
Electronic document management refers to what is mostly known as electronic filing. The inclination today is to use electronic equipment for filing. Before discussing the topic, it is important to consider a development in electronic document management, especially for larger businesses: the storage of documents on remote computers via cloud technology.
An example of basic cloud technology document storage facilities is Dropbox, which is freely available for download to individual users for personal use, but it has to be purchased by businesses for corporate use. The Internet search engine Google also offers cloud technology for document storage in the form of Google Drive, as does Microsoft and OneDrive. These facilities are available off-line, which means a drive can be created on the user’s computer which is accessed via Windows Explorer for example, in the same way as the hard drive or an external hard drive. Normal electronic filing procedures apply.
For more sophisticated electronic document management systems, software can be developed specifically for the business based on its demands. These are referred to as Enterprise Information Management Systems (EIMS). EIMS combines different approaches to information management: Enterprise Content
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