3 Corporate Records Management Tools Keeping Businesses Organized

Enhance digitization efforts, automate compliance policies, and facilitate collaboration with these helpful tools

Good record-keeping is the oil that keeps corporate machinery humming smoothly. But businesses create, store, and track countless paper documents each day — not to mention their vast archives of existing records. To help ensure they remain compliant with necessary regulations, more companies are turning to digitization to streamline corporate records management processes and improve efficiency.

This guide explains how records management tools can aid any business and what to look for when choosing one to enhance your records management efforts. We also suggest powerful tools that will help companies organize their digital records, automate document creation and retention policies, and reduce the possibility of human error.

Read our guide to business information management systems to find the practices, tools, and software you need to keep your business’ essential info accessible.

The benefits of corporate records management tools

Implementing digital corporate records management tools can improve productivity, decrease costs associated with creating and storing physical documents, and streamline the flow of information throughout your organization. Other benefits include:

• Better organization: Paper documents are easily lost or misfiled, especially in organizations with large teams and a massive archive of records. With digital corporate records management tools, organizations can ensure records are automatically sorted, tagged, and filed right where clerks expect them to be.
• Enhanced compliance: Many organizations, such as hospitals, banks, and legal offices, must adhere to state and federal regulations when handling and storing confidential client or patient data. Corporate records management tools ensure that your business follows these regulations through automated rules and document policies, protecting sensitive data and securely disposing of records when no longer required.
• Improved access and retrieval: Corporate records management tools facilitate intra-office recovery of crucial information and enable greater access for both employees and clients across the globe.
• Protection against data loss: Flooding, fires, theft, or simple carelessness — these events can cause significant harm to the stored knowledge and documentation of any organization. By backing up physical records in the cloud, businesses can ensure that they have redundancies in place to prevent the loss of information should disastrous events occur. Organizations can also better protect physical records through more stringent archival procedures once documents have been digitized.

What to look for in corporate records management tools

While no two corporate records management systems are the same, the best options currently available on the market provide several crucial features. Whichever option you choose, it should include the following at minimum:

• Version control: Knowing who has accessed your digital records and what they’ve changed — as well as the ability to revert to previous versions to fix mistakes — is crucial for maintaining high-quality digital records.
• Process automation: The best way to help ensure compliance is through automation. Many corporate records management programs have process and policy tools that allow businesses to set specific creation guidelines, access and sharing limitations, as well as timelines for deletion — all occurring without user involvement. For example, with the right automated policies in place, HR departments no longer need to worry about how long they must keep certain tax documents on file after an employee leaves the organization.
• Tagging and labeling features: Many programs can tag records when created to enable more robust searchability and filtration capabilities. Some even detect document content and will automatically tag scanned records as they are uploaded into the system.
• User access management features: Enhance security by ensuring employees can access the necessary records to complete their job. Many tools allow organizations to create user groups, set permissions on a user-by-user basis, and lock records down to the individual file.

3 of our picks for the best corporate records management tools

With countless corporate records management tools available on the market, sifting through the available options to choose just one can be an overwhelming process. The following are our picks for the best options currently available, capable of suiting a variety of businesses:

• Hyland OnBase offers a robust, cloud-based corporate records management and content services platform. Teams can configure workflows to more efficiently manage repeatable tasks, group documents, records, and other information into cases, and automate retention and destruction of records based on user-set specifications.
• Laserfiche combines a powerful records management platform with AI-powered intelligent character recognition, enabling businesses to automatically capture data from digital scans, tag files, and fix manual errors.
• Microsoft Purview provides built-in audit and compliance tools, helping organizations reduce non-compliance risk through automated detection, tracking, and management of sensitive information. Microsoft Purview is also natively compatible with the suite of Microsoft 365 products, including Word, Outlook, Teams, and more.

Our recommendation: fi-8170

Those in the market for a document scanner to aid their corporate records management efforts have no shortage of options. We take great pride in having spent the last 50+ years researching, designing, and developing some of the most advanced and powerful electronics in the world, including our professional grade fi Series scanners.

Built to purpose for the most demanding document handling jobs, fi and SP scanners are capable of processing tens-of-thousands of pages per day at the highest levels of accuracy. Their intuitive integration capabilities with all existing work suites minimize time-to-value for businesses looking to invest in tools that will pay dividends for years to come.

With a 100-page automatic document feeder and double-sided scanning of up to 70 pages per minute, the fi-8170 can make quick work of your physical client or patient record archives. Plus, intelligent paper protection helps to prevent paper jams to ensure your physical records remain intact, and manual feed mode enables scans for a variety of awkwardly-sized or delicate documents. Click here to learn more or shop the rest of our production scanner line.

Note: Information and external links are provided for your convenience and for educational purposes only, and shall not be construed, or relied upon, as legal advice. PFU America, Inc. makes no representations about the contents, features, or specifications on such third-party sites, software, and/or offerings (collectively “Third-Party Offerings”) and shall not be responsible for any loss or damage that may arise from your use of such Third-Party Offerings. Please consult with a licensed attorney regarding your specific situation as regulations may be subject to change.