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In the past when companies were looking for solutions to remove
or reduce costs from their business, their first port was to remove old
files from their expensive office space and put it into deep storage in a
remote warehouse where the price was low and access was minimal.

This type of service tended to be used for inactive archival documents,
as a low cost method of keeping them safe until the end of their statutory
retention period when they could be destroyed. This is the origins of

Document Storage.
As legislation and technology came into place requiring businesses
and organisations to keep documents as evidence and technology has
developed, the need has moved to that of managing information. This

sort of active management, so an organisation can quickly and easily
locate & retrieve the information it seeks, has proven to offer such
organisations competitive advantage in addition to the more obvious

benefit of regulatory compliance.
Storing documents is not a simple as putting boxes in an empty
warehouse. With the introduction of computers and the electronically

created and stored data they have give rise to, we produce more paper
records per head of employee than ever before. Companies increasingly
find the ‘paperless office’ continues to be a myth though the ‘less-paper’

office is becoming a reality.
The advent of a raft of corporate legislation, from The Sarbanes
Oxley Act 2002 in the USA, to the 8th Law Directive from the EU
Parliament, Basel II and Financial Services Authority Regulations, have

caused everyone to look more seriously at how they manage
information, or “records”, that are generated from within their
organisations. As more electronic communication takes place and courts

accept electronic versions of events we find records management
spanning a paper documents to electronic data. With examples of cases
where courts have sent computer experts to ‘undelete’ records from hard
drives records management companies have seen the expansion of

documents that need to be held.
Nothing like the threat of litigation, fines, or even, in extreme
cases, imprisonment for CEO’s, has focused business minds to ensuring

that companies meet all of the statutory requirements issued via various
Government Departments and Regulatory bodies.
Corporate compliance is driving through a standardisation of

approach to the whole subject. Everything from referencing items,
implementing retention policies, retrieval methodology and certified