From Cleanup to Competitive Advantage: Building a Smarter Records Strategy and Moving Beyond “One-and-Done” Cleanup

In the rush to modernize, many organizations approach records remediation like spring cleaning—treating it as a one-time project meant to purge legacy files and satisfy a compliance milestone. However, this mindset leaves organizations vulnerable to costly repetition, compliance backslide, and long-term inefficiency.

According to the Compliance, Governance and Oversight Council (CGOC), 69% of data stored by a typical organization is classified as ROT—redundant, obsolete, or trivial. This figure isn't just alarming—it represents a massive financial and legal liability.

It is no secret that many organizations, even in highly regulated industries, lack visibility into what records they have, where they’re stored, and whether they are still legally or operationally required. Without proper control, organizations expose themselves to regulatory violations, audit failures, and reputational risk.

True transformation requires shifting from ad hoc cleanups to repeatable, defensible workflows that embed record remediation into ongoing operations. This change doesn't just manage the problem—it eliminates it at the source.

Three Pillars of a Future-Ready Records Strategy

A smarter records strategy isn’t a matter of doing more—it’s a matter of doing things differently. Across industries, forward-looking organizations are building sustainable records programs around three core capabilities: centralization and visibility, automation and integration, and continuous governance.

1.      Centralization and Visibility

Fragmented records environments remain one of the biggest challenges for effective oversight. In many cases, physical records live across multiple sites, third-party vendors, and storage formats—some inventoried, many not. A lack of transparency drives up costs and undermines compliance.

KPMG identifies centralized inventories and classification schemes as foundational to reducing these risks. Without a consolidated view, organizations cannot apply consistent retention policies or respond efficiently to litigation and audit demands.

Centralizing this information into a single IG dashboard allows organizations to:

• Map record types against applicable retention requirements

• Identify and prioritize high-risk or high-cost collections

• Flag items under legal hold or nearing disposition eligibility

• Benchmark vendor costs and identify contractual inefficiencies

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Simply put, without transparency, you cannot enforce accountability.

2.      Technology as a Force Multiplier

Physical records cleanup doesn’t mean digitize everything. It means using technology strategically to enhance access, enforce policy, and eliminate unnecessary retention.

Where digitization is warranted, records should be:

• Indexed, secured, and integrated into ECM or DMS systems

• Tagged with metadata that supports legal hold, retention, and privacy policies

• Made available for search, reporting, and AI model training

  
  

Particularly important are tools like automated metadata tagging and intelligent categorization to reduce manual review burden and improve defensibility. This is particularly crucial in regulated industries like financial services and healthcare, where retrieval speed and audit trails are non-negotiable.

In one case, a company avoided excessive scanning costs by developing a defensible pre-scanning process: expired and low-value records were segregated for destruction, while high-value records were prioritized for imaging. With tools like automated classification and retention coding, governance is built into the system—reducing reliance on manual review and ensuring consistency.

The right technology choices (properly integrated) don't just digitize—they enable smarter decisions, faster responses, and better governance at scale.

3.      Continuous Governance

One-time cleanups solve today’s problem. But tomorrow’s challenges—new acquisitions, evolving regulations, shifting business needs—require a governance model that is ongoing, embedded, and accountable.

Particularly critical is “record lifecycle control,” which includes regular reviews, clear ownership, and documented disposal procedures. This ensures records are not only retained properly—but also destroyed when appropriate.

Key elements of continuous governance include:

• Quarterly review and purge cycles aligned with the retention schedule

• Cross-functional coordination between Legal, Compliance, HR, and Facilities

• Self-audit workflows that empower departments to flag ROT and risk

• Disposition triggers tied to events like site closures or employee offboarding

This proactive model isn’t just efficient—it’s more defensible. It also supports ESG and sustainability goals by reducing the carbon footprint associated with storing, retrieving, and transporting physical records.

Continuous governance turns sporadic remediation into institutional resilience.

Empowering Stakeholders at Every Level

Modern records management is a team sport. Legal needs quick access to files under hold. HR must validate employee history and support claims. Compliance teams must respond to audits with confidence. Yet, too often, these groups are left out of cleanup efforts—until it’s too late.

Key questions every organization should be asking:

• Can HR locate offboarded employee files without delay?

• Does Legal have visibility into which boxes contain records on litigation hold?

• Is Compliance able to track whether destruction activities align with regulatory mandates?

• Do business units understand how storage fees and ROT impact budgets and risk exposure?

  
  

When each department understands its role, governance becomes a shared responsibility—not just a records issue.

A Final Word: Don’t Just Store—Steward

Records storage is no longer a neutral activity. It carries real costs, real risks, and real consequences. Yet, when governed strategically, records can become assets: supporting litigation readiness, improving customer experience, enabling AI, and informing decision-making.

Records are a core component of enterprise risk management and should be treated accordingly. Governance, they argue, must extend beyond compliance—it must become a strategic differentiator.

The transition starts with a mindset shift—from storage to stewardship, from cleanup to continuity.

For Information Governance professionals, this is the inflection point. The tools are ready. The risks are clear. The opportunity is now.