While pandemic shut-downs are well in the past, remote and hybrid work environments continue to be a thriving trend. In fact, according to the Pew Research Center, 35% of workers with jobs that can be done remotely are doing so all of the time and 41% are working a hybrid schedule. Nearly 60% of the hybrid workers are working from home three or more days a week.

Organizations in support of the trend allow employees to work remotely while still collaborating with their colleagues, managers, and clients. While this is beneficial for many reasons, it also presents new challenges when it comes to managing sensitive data across multiple locations. In response, many businesses are turning to solutions that combine digital records management and offsite storage services. These can offer companies convenience, security, efficiency, and cost savings while increasing productivity.

When choosing an offsite storage and records management solution for your organization, it’s important to consider all of your options carefully before making a decision. If you have sensitive information that needs to be stored securely but made accessible when necessary—whether it’s a customer database or financial records—you need to prioritize those features while also keeping costs down. Following are some document management solutions you should keep an eye out for when exploring offsite storage and records management providers.

Offsite Storage: More Convenient and Cost-Effective than Onsite Storage

Offsite storage is more convenient, cost-effective, and more secure than onsite storage. If you’re currently storing your documents in an onsite records room or facility, your staff can get bogged down in searching for files. Offsite storage is a viable option to consider if you’re looking to outsource menial tasks so your staff can focus on higher value work. And if you aren’t already using an offsite solution, this section will walk you through the benefits of storing remotely.

When you store documents onsite, you have to invest in additional expensive real estate to house them as well as pay for the equipment that manages and maintains them. In addition to the cost of renting or owning a building, businesses must also pay for utilities (power, heat, A/C, water, and internet); buying and maintaining the systems needed to control information access (servers, IT security, and physical security equipment like security cameras); salaries of people to maintain and monitor systems, and resources to track when to disposition those records. This makes offsite storage a much more cost-effective and convenient option.

Offsite storage traditionally offers more security than onsite storage can. Onsite storage can be a security risk for several reasons. First, it’s susceptible to the full range of potential vulnerabilities that exist in any building, such as theft and natural disasters. Second, you must employ staff to oversee the facility and its contents—and that staff could be unknowingly compromising the safety of your documents by not following compliance guidelines and industry security standards (i.e. human error). Third, offsite facilities are usually much more secure than onsite ones are because they have additional physical safety measures employed such as biometric or barcoded entry, electronic locks, and motion sensors that are more difficult for an onsite facility to implement.

Document Scanning & Imaging

Scanning documents is a great way to preserve the information in them and reduce the costs of storing paper records. Digitizing your documents allows you to better organize and manage them, as well as make them more secure and sharable for collaboration.

When you scan documents with Access, for example, we track who has access to each document for you, which makes it easy for you to control permissions on different levels. This can help improve productivity by making it easier for employees across departments to collaborate without worrying about security, privacy issues, or being confused about who has access to what kind of information.

Scanning documents is just one of the many ways that your organization can benefit from offsite storage and digitization solutions. Let us do the heavy lifting! Our services will help make your business more efficient and effective, empowering you to accelerate growth.

Secure Document Destruction

Whether you’re a small-, medium- or large-sized business, document disposition and destruction is an important part of lifecycle management that many offsite storage providers offer. Document shredding can help your organization dispose of sensitive documents in a cost-effective and secure way according to your company’s retention policies. It also protects against data breaches and other security threats, which can result in reputational harm and financial loss for your business if they occur. Additionally, document destruction helps ensure compliance with applicable laws, regulations, and policies concerning the disposal of confidential information.

Conclusion

Remote and hybrid work is here to stay. Today, more and more companies are looking at ways to merge their onsite presence with their offsite resources and save money by divesting or selling real estate outright. However, they often struggle with finding a solution that will allow them to do so seamlessly. By leveraging help from an offsite records management company, remote-hybrid organizations gain the ability to manage their records in secure, compliant, cost-effective, and efficient ways.

Access offers records management solutions that serve the entire document lifecycle, including offsite storage, document scanning, record retention management, information governance, secure document destruction, and Access Unify, our tech-enabled information management subscription service.

For more guidance on offsite records management and how to choose the right information management partner, check out our eBook: From Vendor to Partner: How the Right Records and Information Management Provider Can Transform Your Program

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