After acquiring another practice, a well-established local solicitors who have been working with Archive-Vault for a number of years needed our help to consolidate their archiving. Naturally, they inherited the new practice’s archiving with another offsite storage company. After looking into it a little further, the firm realised that the records management system was almost non-existent and nowhere near the standard they expected. As their existing archiving strategy with Archive-Vault works so well, the solicitors got in touch to find a solution to integrate the boxes and streamline them into one system.
The Challenge
Archive-Vault arranged a call with the client’s Facilities Manager and quickly identified a number of challenges that need to be addressed.
Additional cost – Two offsite storage companies means two monthly invoices. Spending unnecessary money could delay future projects and improvements that the business wants to make. It could also limit their ability to expand the business, having an impact on overall profitability. Consolidating your storage can reduce costs and save you money.
Lack of knowledge – Unfortunately, there was no record of which files were in storage and how long they needed to be kept. This could lead to potential data breaches and, without knowing what is in storage, you risk duplicating files and wasting valuable staff time making copies or looking for the original in the wrong place.
Returning files – When files need to be returned to storage, there is no way of knowing which box they need to be returned to. This could lead to loose files being stacked up at the firm’s office, creating more disorganisation and leading to wasted time in the future searching for the file.
There was no space for the solicitors’ to take receipt of all the additional boxes, so Archive-Vault liaised with the other storage company to arrange a date and time to collect the boxes and bring them into the Archive-Vault warehouse for review. The Archive-Vault buildings are equipped with a designated review room, giving the solicitors ample space to review the boxes and remove any files that no longer need to be kept.
When bringing the boxes into the warehouse, we came across further challenges:
Damaged boxes – 90% of the boxes were in extremely poor condition. They did not comply with Archive-Vault’s high health and safety standards, meaning these boxes would not be able to be stored in our warehouse. Damaged boxes could also mean the files inside are compromised.
Shredding bags – There was shredding bags full of active files that were in storage. This is incredibly dangerous and puts these files at great risk of being shredded. All of the documents stored in the Archive-Vault warehouse are in sturdy archive boxes, ensuring the contents are protected and located.
No indexing – Although we had already established there was no log to show which files were in the boxes, there was no indexing on the physical box either which meant we were unable to order them to make the process easier for the client.
The Solution
We agreed on a staged review process with the client, completing it over three visits. The Facilities Manager from the solicitors made the decision to either destroy the file, take it back to the office for further review, or create a new sequence of boxes for the file to be indexed into.
Archive-Vault’s purpose-built warehouses use state-of-the-art barcode technology to ensure each item in storage has a full audit trail and trackable movement history. Items cannot be taken out of storage and misplaced as our robust barcoding system means you always know each file’s location.
We understood from the Facilities Manager that the boxes needed to fall into the same archiving strategy currently being used. As they already use our client portal, we were able to act quickly to ensure all boxes were barcoded, scanned away and indexed ready to be viewed online.
Our client portal enables the user to manage and view the boxes and files they have in storage at their convenience. They can also request deliveries and collections at a time to suit them, order new boxes, and download full inventory reports at the click of a button.
Storing these additional boxes offsite with Archive-Vault has eliminated the wasted time, money and resources required to manage two archiving contracts. Furthermore, the client no longer needs to worry about the whereabouts of their documentation as all files returned to store are scanned back into their correct boxes by the Archive-Vault team quickly and efficiently, with a fully managed service.
The Results
- All boxes are securely stored in our purpose-built warehouse and protected by our high-level security protocols
- Each file is indexed and fully trackable through our comprehensive barcode system
- The client now has quick and easy access to items whenever needed
- Files are delivered directly to their office at their convenience
- Their full inventory is managed through our online Client Portal
- A full audit trail is created for each document
- The client has reduced overall costs and saved significant amounts of staff time
*Due to the nature of their business, our client has chosen to remain anonymous for this case study.
