Protecting its reputation with iron mountain shredding services

Challenge:

Implement an easy, efficient and cost-effective solution to dispose of clients' sensitive documents in a safe and timely manner.

Solution:

Iron Mountain secure shredding

Value:

• Confidence that clients' information is being protected.
• A quicker, quieter and more cost-effective solution than office shredders.
• Less time spent shredding, more time spent on achieving business goals.

Professional Alternative identifies and recruits IT professionals for leading financial services companies and for large integrators of government contracts. Established in 1994, its continued success is fueled by its hard won reputation for providing outstanding results for both the professionals the company recruits and the companies it supplies. This has been achieved by partnering closely with its clients, and protecting those relationships is key to its business success.

Its specialized service involves handling classified project descriptions from clients as well as sensitive personal information from prospects, including résumés that contain personal financial information, medical history, tax information and more. Protecting this private data, from receipt to disposal, is vital to client confidence and the company’s reputation.

"Our reputation really is the most important thing that we have out there. Like every business, it's a highly competitive business, and if we don't have a good reputation or if we don't do a good job for our clients, we can be replaced."

PATRICK COX, PRESIDENT

A solution tailored to professional alternative's specific needs

Maintaining client confidentiality is a cornerstone to Professional Alternative's business. But as its business and client base grew, it needed a better way to dispose of sensitive documents. Its in-house shredding equipment was taking too much time and making too much noise, disrupting sales teams and recruiters who were on the phone all day.

Professional Alternative decided that outsourcing the destruction would be the simplest and most cost-effective solution - if the vendor had a reputation that would satisfy the company's clients. Looking at its options Professional Alternative quickly realized that Iron Mountain was the leader in this field; clearly the vendor it would prefer to partner with. Being a small company, it worried that it might be too small to be serviced by Iron Mountain. One phone call put its fears to rest. Iron Mountain proposed a cost-effective program that addressed its individual requirements.

"When we chose to use the Iron Mountain services, it was part of a group of ideas that we made to have the company run more efficiently and be a more mature company. By choosing to use the bins, it was just a simple idea of not having the noise or the inefficiency of using a shredder," said Patrick Cox.

"I can't imagine an easier service and a better peace of mind and it's also a selling point that you can use with your clients to say, "˜Look, our data's secure. We use Iron Mountain.' What better reference could you give?"

PATRICK COX, PRESIDENT

Professional Alternative partnered with Iron Mountain to implement a program that would discretely and securely collect, transport and dispose of sensitive documents throughout its four company offices. With Iron Mountain secure shredding, documents were simply placed into locked shred bins that were regularly emptied by Iron Mountain employees. Safe, secure, simple and quiet.

Then and now

By using the Iron Mountain Secure Shredding service, Professional Alternative now disposes of sensitive documents the easy way — safely and efficiently. It knows it can rely on Iron Mountain and that means that it can spend less time managing its paper shredding and more time managing its business.