records management
Records management (RM) is the supervision and administration of digital or paper records, regardless of format.
Records management activities include the creation, receipt, maintenance, use and disposal of records. In this context, a record is content that documents a business transaction. Documentation may exist in contracts, memos, paper files, electronic files, reports, emails, videos, instant message logs or database records. Paper records may be stored in physical boxes on-premises or at a storage facility. Digital records may be stored on storage media in-house or in the cloud.
The goal of records management is to help an organization keep the necessary documentation accessible for both business operations and compliance audits. In some small to mid-sized businesses, spreadsheets are used to track where records are stored, but larger organizations may find records management software suites that are tied to both a taxonomy and a records retention schedule to be more useful. Such software suites may be marketed as enterprise information management (EIM) products that are capable of helping an organization to manage both records and ordinary content.
See also: records information management, spreadmart
