From accounting firms to flower shops, small businesses face a virtual flood of data containing customer information, orders, invoices, financial statements. Such data is increasingly digital, which is both a blessing (less physical space required) and a curse (more challenging to organize and retrieve). What’s more, evolving compliance regulations and the threat of lawsuits require companies to keep better, more permanent records of electronic data and maintain the ability to retrieve that information quickly.
Company data has grown not only in volume, as business transactions and records are almost universally digital, but also grown in complexity. Choosing what to keep, where to keep it and how long to keep it is increasingly driven by legal requirements that extend beyond even Sarbanes-Oxley and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act mandates (which apply only to subsets of documents in certain types of organizations).
Under revisions to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) that took effect Dec. 1, 2006, any organization that could face civil legal action is required to inventory all electronically stored information. If an organization is sued, they must be prepared within 30 days to identify and permanently retain all electronic records pertinent to that action, in addition to long-established FRCP requirements regarding paper records.
As with everything else in business, data management requires a strategy for success. Developing a good strategy will save you time, money and heartache. Simply stated: it will make your life a lot easier.
A good data archiving system enables a small business to:
Comply with regulatory requirements.
Protect themselves from litigation.
Improve network efficiency.
Improve employee productivity.
Save money.
Reduce the complexity of their data backup processes.
Data requires management from the moment it is created to the time it is discarded. Often referred to as information life-cycle management, data management includes a combination of business processes, policies, and disk storage hardware and software to help an organization work efficiently and strategically with data.
A key element of effective data management is tiered storage, which allows organizations to store new or regularly used data in higher-end disk storage devices while storing less frequently used data in lower-cost disk storage devices. The right software will then enable small businesses to manage the flow of data between the different storage tiers.
In some cases, a three-tiered solution works best, typically divided into the following categories:
Tier 1: Operational – Documents used for daily transactions.
Tier 2: Reference – Information occasionally needed for reference.
Tier 3: Archive – Information you only don’t need regular access to.
By keeping nonessential data in second and third storage tiers, small businesses can reduce the amount of data that they would need to regularly back up on the primary high-end storage devices. In turn, small businesses will be able to run backups more efficiently, decreasing the chance of backup errors.
In addition, relieving primary disk storage of the loads of old, unnecessary data will boost storage servers’ performance. Employees will be able to work more efficiently – with less data to sort through, users will be able to find and access data more quickly. The storage tier system also enables users to find archived data more easily when it is needed on those rare occasions.
Cost savings are just one more benefit that small businesses can gain through a solid data management system that includes a tiered storage plan. Small businesses won’t need to spend as much for primary disk storage space. They also won’t need to spend as much on IT administration for the storage systems. Storage archiving hardware generally costs less, is easy to use, and requires less IT maintenance than primary storage gear.
Here are the basic steps to developing a sound data archiving strategy:
Understand the regulations and legal requirements for your business size and category.
Classify your data according to importance and business need.
Identify data according to age and how often it is accessed.
Assess your hardware and software needs for data management.
Move all of your inactive data to the archive.
Once in place, a good data management system is the best defense against bogging down in the data swamp. Proper data management will allow you to rest easier, knowing that your small business is prepared to comply with regulatory requirements, legal actions or – preferably – business needs. Not only can your business be more prepared, but it can work more efficiently while saving money.
