Application Solutions: Contracts

The Control You Need, the Access You Want

CONTRACTS

Contracts represent some of an organization's most critical and valuable documents. They also pose special challenges for managing access and version control, confidentiality and contract integrity.

Since contracts are often created and updated by many individuals throughout an organization, they must be managed centrally and accessible from multiple locations. It is imperative that authorized parties are able to view the latest, complete version of a contract as well as update necessary fields that facilitate timely access and requisite reporting.

These complex requirements create several operational challenges:

• Controlling authorizations. Contract documents usually exist in a hybrid environment, with both paper and digital formats, requiring strict access controls.
• Distributed and centralized access. Field employees and central management often require access to the same documents for audit and review. Any problems or inefficiencies in duplication, mailing and faxing will increase costs and raise the risk of inadvertent disclosures and/or lost documents.
• Auditing and reporting. If master files are hard to access, users invariably make unauthorized convenience or “phantom” copies. Even when controlled, multiple copies compromise the integrity of the contract management process.
• Security and consistency. Securely managing large volumes of active records in a distributed environment is difficult to do in a compliant manner.

Gain from our experience

Iron Mountain's contract solutions provide a comprehensive approach to storing and accessing your contracts, with special expertise in managing hybrid records (both paper and digital). We leverage industry-leading technology, best practices and rigorous chain of custody to ensure that your contracts are secure, and that access is restricted to authorized employees regardless of location.

A key advantage of our solution is the Iron Mountain Digital Record Center® for Images. Enable our standard application for human resources to host your image files in one centralized location, index them into standard fields based on Iron Mountain's expertise in human resources, and deliver multi-site protected access to any number of authorized users over secure internet connections. This centralized approach ensures a more consistent and secure program, which in turn enhances control and access, increases auditing and reporting accuracy, and improves overall business continuity. Imaging of the contracts can be handled by distributed capture, lowering the risk of loss through transportation and minimizing the time lag between generation and access.

Iron Mountain's expertise in physical and electronic security measures and exacting contract management processes can help you implement a successful program that will drive down costs and improve protection of, and access to, your most sensitive contracts.

FeATuReS AT A glANCe

• Demonstrated results. Improved efficiencies, easier collaboration, lower overhead, and faster access to contracts by your distributed workforce.
• enhanced security. Strict access controls to source documents reduce the risk of loss or unauthorized access. — improved auditing and reporting. Detailed document management with audit trails and reporting support compliance needs.
• Reduced costs. Outsourced management of physical and digital documents relieves internal resources, facilities and capital investments.
• improved access. A tailored solution, using the Digital Record Center for Images, improves access to needed documents — with security and control improvements.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. How do you manage the retention of paper contracts?

A. Iron Mountain will maintain the documents as active” until the contract has expired or lapsed. Once this event occurs, we will then apply the retention codes established by your organization. We can manage your paper contracts during their full lifecycle and certify their destruction according to your record retention plan.

Q. How can i find all of the contracts that are due for renewal/renegotiation next month?

A. Finding this type of information is easy. If authorized, you can query a database for the parameter(s) you are interested in — in this case, you would query for renewal dates.

Q. Do i need to centralize all my contracts into one iron mountain location?

A. No. Iron Mountain has over 1,000 Record Centers equipped to handle your records management needs. Many of these Record Centers also have Imaging Centers that provide Image on DemandTM services that allow an authorized employee to request the scanning and upload of any paper contract into the Digital Record Center for Images.

Q. Since our contracts contain so much boilerplate information, there are typically only a few pages of the contract i actually need to have scanned. is that possible to do?

A. Yes, this is called abstract scanning. You have the ability to identify just those select documents from the file you would like scanned. Trained Iron Mountain imaging specialists will only scan those pages per your instructions, and return the scanned document to their original file location, retaining the integrity of the file.

Q. Has addendums/new purchase orders/ amendments are made to contracts, how do we add to the existing imaged documents?

A. Physical trailing documentation can be drop-filed into the appropriate contract folders to consolidate them. If documents are to be imaged, they are scanned and indexed as separate documents using the same scheme as the original file.

745 Atlantic Avenue Boston, MA 02111 800 899 IRON (4766)

AbOuT iRON mOuNTAiN Iron Mountain Incorporated (NYSE: IRM) provides information management services that help organizations lower the costs, risks and inefficiencies of managing their physical and digital data. Founded in 1951, Iron Mountain manages billions of information assets, including backup and archival data, electronic records, document imaging, business records, secure shredding, and more, for organizations around the world. Visit the company Web site at http://www.ironmountain.com for more information.