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the identity of their clients. In addition to the physical security and
protection of the storage environment the documents also needs to be
shown to be the original, free of any alteration. This may require special
management and it is important that the provider is able to adhere to

stringent management controls.
Finally, retention policies should reflect the requirements of law. It
is pre-requisite to be able to provide a full audit trial of any item at any

time and where appropriate a ‘Certificate of Destruction’ to prove that
the document was destroyed in accordance with government laws.
To meet this need, the industry is developing ever more
sophisticated solutions to automate the programme as much as possible.

Smaller companies are benefiting directly as a result of the investment
that is being made into systems for multi-national organisations, which
make managing everyone’s documents easier going forwards.

Standing still in this industry is not an option and the goal posts are
constantly moving. Simply putting boxes onto shelves and leaving them
there in perpetuity is no longer an option. Destruction review

programmes, deep storage solutions, active file management and much
more are areas that records management companies have to explore.
Despite the records management industry being quite a complex

industry, the barriers of entry remain very low and we still find anyone
with a warehouse a transport network feels more capable than records
management specialist to enter into the industry at the detriment of their
clients who may find the lower costs being charged are actually resulting

in their records not being held in an environmentally controlled
warehouse and resulting in damaged records.

Fig. 1.8 Process of record management