Your trusted software, services & support partner

Government and industry regulations regarding data access, archiving, retrieval, and protection are adding to IT challenges in many organisations. The need to comply with various policies and regulations means having a proactive, strategic approach to information management throughout the enterprise. This is especially true for healthcare, pharmaceutical, financial services, and government agencies. The stakes are high: failure to comply can result in significant financial and legal sanctions.

Corporate Communications and Record-Keeping
Email has become a major means of business communication. Ferris Research estimates that the number of corporate emails increased by 50% over the past year and predicts an increase of 35-50% next year. IDC forecast that the number of emails sent daily will grow from 9.7 billion in 2000 to over 35 billion in 2005. Email has become a standard means of interoffice communication (such as memoranda), as well as communication with customers, suppliers and business partners. The ability to attach documents adds to email's utility as a communication medium, as companies can deliver statements, bills, prospectus information, and other types of information.

The pervasiveness and utility of email as a communication medium is both advantageous and a potential problem for modern business. Email gives exchange members a fast and efficient mechanism of communicating internally, with each other, with branch offices, and with clients. However, this can lead to potential headaches for business functions, from HR to CEO's (see separate paper on Compliance). Recordkeeping deficiencies are among the most common reasons for censure by regulatory bodies; such as FSA in financial cases(CSFB fined £4mil by FSA in 2002) and Parliamentary Ombudsman (Feb 2003 - Home Office record keeping in the Hinduja affair); and by the courts (such as McCabe v BAT 2002, where the judge found in favor of the plaintiff due to destruction of documents).

The old Irish adage of "you are better looking at it, than looking for it" applies very nicely to the compliance risk associated with the retention of electronic documents. Maxima employ the Information Lifecycle Management Solutions from EMC to assist our customers in meeting these document retention strategies.

>> Click here to request more information

" By working in partnership with Maxima, we have been able to develop in-house skills to meet some of these needs; primarily 1st line support. However the option of employing specialist staff to fulfill part time functions made no financial sense and would have introduced significant risk to the running of our production system. For us the service offered by Maxima made perfect sense. "