Iron Mountain Smart Sort

Solution Guides

As you accelerate digital transformation, you want to reduce cost and risk by destroying paper records that are no longer needed. Unfortunately, this is often not as simple as it sounds.

February 26, 20246 mins
Iron Mountain employee looking for a box in a warehouse

Achieve your information governance and business objectives with Smart Sort


Do you...

  • have a large volume of inherited records?
  • have trouble finding records when you need them?
  • want to relocate inventory but first need to destroy what you no longer need?
  • want to destroy records but can’t confidently isolate which ones are eligible without a substantial investment?
  • want to go paper free but find it difficult to make decisions about which records to digitize?
  • need to isolate records for a merger, acquisition or divestiture?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, ask us about Iron Mountain Smart Sort.

Your challenge

You need to sort and reorganize your records inventory to make defensible decisions on disposition. Unfortunately, this is not as simple as it sounds.

What makes destroying records so complicated?

  • Lack of inventory integrity/visibility: When key metadata is not captured and listed throughout the information lifecycle, it is difficult to search, manage and make decisions on what records to retain, digitize, or destroy.
  • Commingled record types and event date complexity: Different record types have different requirements. If records are not organized according to record classification or event date, you can’t confidently and defensibly take action.
  • Reorganizing records is labor intense and expensive: You lack the resources to sort each file by destruction eligibility date, record type, a unique identifier, or other requirement.

What this means?

  • Unnecessary cost: Large volumes of records without file-level metadata are stored without regard to destruction eligibility dates or record classification will impact your ability to effectively manage your program.
  • Increased risk Holding onto records longer than necessary increases the risk of information loss and regulatory violations. It also adds complexity to legal discovery, audit response and compliance management processes.
  • Lost productivity: Finding what you need and making quick decisions on records disposition requires a well organize inventory. Without an efficient process to sort and reorganize files, you could lose time and delay your critical objectives.

Simplify and expedite decision-making

With Iron Mountain Smart Sort, you can quickly and confidently make decisions about your legacy files to enable a more compliant and efficient records management program.

Our trained records management team will use input from your database and records retention schedule to automate defensible decision-making at the file level. We will sort and reorganize your records so that you can confidently make decisions about disposition and quickly meet business objectives, like responding to a divestiture, legal matter, or destruction requirements.

Smart sort enables you to make defensible decisions by sorting and reorganizing records by:

  • Destruction date: Sort and reorganize your records according to destruction eligibility year so that you can confidently destroy paper documents as they meet retention dates.
  • Category: Initiatives, such as divestiture, require the need to isolate records in a short period of time. We will sort and reorganize your records according to record type, record status, unique identifier - or whatever you require.
  • Association: If you do not require sorting and reorganizing of your inventory, leverage Smart Sort to apply metadata to records at the file level so that you can avoid the high cost of manual file-level listing.

Budget-friendly solution

With a single touch, the Iron Mountain team can make a real-time decision, based on your retention policy, about what to do with your file. This drives significant efficiencies, allowing us to deliver a truly cost-effective solution.

Our team can support you from Iron Mountain record centers or at your location. If you have records in-house or at an offsite storage facility, we can support your needs.

Smart Sort and how it works

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Achieve your information governance business objectives

  • Make quick and confident decisions
    Iron Mountain leverages data from your existing database and retention schedule to automate defensible decision-making.
  • Simplify future decision-making
    Stored records will be sorted according to destruction eligibility year, record type, a unique identifier—or whatever you require.
  • Reduce program costs and risks
    Initiate immediate destruction of eligible records to reduce storage costs and mitigate legal discovery, audit, and compliance risks.
  • Improve find rates
    At the completion of your Smart Sort project, you will have an up-to-date listing that enables accurate and efficient records.

Smart Records Cleanup Suite

When it comes to cleaning up your legacy records inventory, we understand that no two boxes are alike and that different circumstances require different approaches. That’s why Smart Sort is just one component of Iron Mountain’s Smart Records Cleanup Suite, a collection of solutions that, together, address your organization’s entire legacy records inventory.

The Smart Sort process enables automatic decision-making about how each file should be managed in order to meet the specific requirements of your organization.
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Smart Assign

Have boxes missing record codes? Smart Assign automatically assigns record classification codes according to your organization’s records retention schedule.

Smart Assign
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Smart Reveal

Storing boxes full of unknown contents? Smart Reveal takes purposeful photographs of each box so that you can understand the contents and make informed decisions about the next steps.

Smart Reveal
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Smart Sort

Commingled files? Smart Sort technology reorganizes your files according to destruction eligibility, category, association, or whatever you require—regardless of record storage location.

Smart Sort