Make Lost Office Documents a Thing of the Past

Don't Fall into the Trap of Losing Corporate Records
For the past three years, your company as been working feverously to finish a new technology that will benefit all walks of life. It has been a difficult three years as the financials of the company are all heading into the red, and the investors are anxiously demanding a return on their initial investment. The stress levels and demands on each employee have been extreme. As CEO, you've been walking a tightrope between investor's demands and your own expectations of your employees. Realizing the highly competitive market your find yourself in, internal control and security have been a high priority. The company would fall if the design plans of your new technology were to reach the competitors hands. Confident that you have done everything possible to ensure control over internal documents, you sit back and relax for a minute knowing that your company is about to make a huge contribution to society, as the engineers are reporting positive results from the final testing phase.
It is at this moment that your CTO walks in to the room with a pale face, looking as if he had witnessed death himself. He tells you that one of the engineers has e-mailed pieces of the technology to a foreign competitor. This has been going on for the past 8 months, he says. The CTO continues to say that the extent of the damage is not fully known, but that he expects the worse. As CEO, you ask yourself, what else could have been done, what else could we have implemented to catch these actions?
To answer this question, a record management software package created by NextPage would have protected the documents describing the company's new technology. This software tracks risky documents from start to finish. Throughout the document lifecycle, any changes made to the document are tracked and noted in a central location. The documents are monitored on desktops, through e-mail, key drives or on a server. A date/time stamp is created for each user when they access the document. It is very easy to see which employee was the last to access the document and to view what changes were made by that employee.
This risk management tool also monitors internal financials and assists greatly in Sarbanes Oxley compliance requirements. Each change made from a member of the financial team is securely noted. This aids in the turn around time for account/auditing firms to validate a corporation's earnings statements.
NextPage's software also aids in the development of products. Through the ability to access a document centrally, and make and save changes to one location, all users will have an interactive approach to documenting revisions. As improvements or setbacks take place, developers and project managers can easily view a central document and see a real-time image of how a product is progressing. Many errors though work duplication or lack of communication are avoided through Next Page's software.
So when it comes to your own business, eliminate the risk of losing corporate secrets and improve the document management within your company. These days one can never be too careful!
Ryan Knapp is an Internet Marketing Consultant for 10x Marketing. For more information about record management, contact NextPage.