Fortune 100 manufacturer: increased consistency reduces costs

Customer Success Stories

Iron Mountain's records management solution helped organise and manage more than 2,000,000 cubic feet of documents.

28 July 20158 mins
Fortune 100 manufacturer increased consistency reduces costs

Challenge

Implement a system for organising and managing records that consistently adheres to regulatory and statutory requirements around the globe.

Solution

Iron Mountain provides offsite, active file management solutions to increase consistency, enhance compliance and reduce costs.

Results

Customer gains control of processes, improves customer response time, reduces costs and supports regulatory compliance.

One of the world's largest manufacturers, this Fortune 100 company employs more than 300,000 people globally and manufactures its products in over 30 countries. As a publicly held company, it is accountable to its shareholders for ensuring sound records management processes and compliance readiness.

The challenge

Over the years, the customer had collected over 2,000,000 cubic feet of documents, maintaining a philosophy of decentralised records management with no standardised system for storage or retrieval. As a result, there was no reliable or timely access to even the most active, necessary documents.

With government mandates of Sarbanes-Oxley and other regulatory requirements, it was also clear that the customer needed to sharpen its focus on compliance preparedness and mitigating the risks and costs of litigation. Therefore, the customer needed to enact significant changes in its records management methodologies and processes.

“Since the partnership with Iron Mountain, we have achieved a measurable improvement in our records management with defined processes for storing and retrieving records. In a litigation-intensive industry, being in control of and prepared with proper documentation is critical for our business and important for corporate responsibility.”

General counsel

The solution

The customer selected Iron Mountain to help streamline and deploy a consistent program, leveraging over 50 years of Iron Mountain leadership and expertise in records management, as well as its geographical footprint.

A key component of the program was the designation of an onsite records manager, an Iron Mountain subject-matter expert with overall responsibility for the company’s records management program. The onsite records manager works full-time on the customer premises to oversee and provide expertise in the development, maintenance and ongoing support of the records and information management policies. This manager also advises the customer of impactful government regulations and their statutory requirements on a global basis.

A core responsibility for the onsite records Manager is the customer’s records retention schedule, which determines what records are maintained and for what length of time. This schedule accounts for associated revisions of both physical and digital records and also monitors global legislative trends and related case laws that could impact the customer. With approval from the customer, the records Manager issues changes to the records retention schedule and communicates the changes to the customer’s key stakeholders through an automated change control process.

The Iron Mountain onsite records Manager also oversees a global records and information management help desk, which provides inquiry support related to records management processes, including training, policies, and email management. The onsite records manager also provides eDiscovery and compliance strategy subject matter expertise. As a result, the customer regularly leverages Iron Mountain’s leadership and expertise to actively benchmark the program against industry best practices.

Currently, the onsite records manager is leading an initiative to re-index customer legacy information contained in over 2,000,000 cubic feet of documents for more efficient search and retrieval of records. Once the initiative is complete, the customer will know exactly the types of records being stored and in which location, leading to greater quality control and a more efficient records retrieval process.

Additionally, the Iron Mountain ConnectTM tool has established greater transparency of company policy, promoting senior management confidence in preparation for internal and external audits. This system provides more visibility and ensures consistency of the records management procedures throughout the global enterprise, with Iron Mountain as the common advisor and manager across locations.

The results

With an established, consistent records management program from Iron Mountain now in place, the customer is able to integrate the management of physical and digital records as necessary, improve process efficiencies, and enable immediate access to vital records. The customer has already increased its customer satisfaction levels with improved responsiveness, and it now more effectively manages the total cost of its storage and retrieval activities.

Given the customer’s exposure to possible litigation, Iron Mountain’s expertise in records organisation, classification and retention management is critical in helping the customer identify and prepare for evolving audit and compliance regulations. Equally important, Iron Mountain’s records management expertise ensures sound corporate governance by reducing the customer’s expenses and protecting its credibility in government and legal proceedings.

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