Data retention is crucial for businesses to protect their interests and customers. Electronic communications, legal documents, and paper records must be efficiently archived for legal and customer support purposes. Good data retention habits can save time and money and provide insights for future business prospects.
Data retention has been important to the well-being of virtually any type of business. In the past, this meant keeping archives of paper documents that could be retrieved as and when needed, keeping those records for decades before discarding them. Today, electronic data retention has made the task easier, a fortunate circumstance as document retention is more important than ever if a business wants to protect its interests and those of its customers.
There are several different types of documents that must be included in any type of data retention program. All electronic communications, especially emails, password-protected files and other documents, are critical to the retention process. Along with electronic correspondence, any type of agreement, contract or other document that includes legal claims by or for the Company must be retained even after these documents are replaced with newer versions. As in the past, paper documents such as customer invoices and records, employee applications and employee file content and healthcare data must also be efficiently archived.
One of the most important reasons for creating and maintaining a strong data retention program has to do with legal issues. Simply put, any document related to the company’s operation may contain information that would help the company in the event of a lawsuit. Saved documentation makes it easy to reconstruct relevant events and timelines and substantiate statements made by company officials regarding what they did and did not do in relation to this specific legal issue. Assuming the data retention program is complete, efficient document archiving can save businesses a great deal of time and money with any type of legal action, including tax-related issues, employee incidents, or customer settlements.
In addition to providing information that may be critical to resolving a legal matter, good data retention habits also offer the possibility of providing superior customer support. The ability to trace events that occurred years ago with a particular customer can pave the way for managing an issue that is now at the forefront, or possibly provide inspiration for some new product or service that may appeal to more than one customer. The ability to compile reports from archived data can make it possible to identify trends and spark insights that would never otherwise be evident. From this perspective, data retention is not just about creating and maintaining a record of the past, it is also about creating a resource that can help improve business prospects in the future.
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