Information Governance

Unite records management, eDiscovery, and archiving to meet compliance requirements, ensure litigation readiness, and reduce legal, compliance, and financial risks

An OpenText Information Governance solution addresses a major concern that all businesses face today: the explosive growth of information – and the enormous costs and risks associated with unmanaged content. The cost of storing all the information a company produces is significant, but it’s a small issue when compared to the legal and compliance risk and litigation costs that accompany the growth of content.

By uniting Records Management, Auto-Classification, Archiving, and eDiscovery, OpenText Information Governance enables you to properly retain and archive content that must be kept, defensibly dispose of content that no longer has business value, and suspend disposition through legal holds when required for eDiscovery. It can reduce the volume of content within the enterprise and therefore reduce the amount of information that needs to be reviewed in the event of litigation. With the high cost of eDiscovery – legal fees alone can quickly run into millions of dollars – defensible disposition can return value immediately.

Just as importantly, the ability to suspend disposition and defensibly place a litigation hold on electronically stored information reduces a significant source of risk. (A “litigation hold” allows you to preserve content in an unchangeable format so that it can be reviewed by a legal team in the event of litigation.)

When implementing an information governance program, many organizations begin with Email Management. They recognize that email is the riskiest form of content within the organization and the area that is most heavily scrutinized during eDiscovery. Typically after email comes file servers, SharePoint content, ERP-related content, and so on.

As part of a Content Lifecycle Management solution, Records Management and Archiving play important roles in properly retaining and disposing of email and other content. These technologies provide the rules and functionality required for determining which content is kept, how long it’s kept, how efficiently it’s stored, and when it can be permanently removed. Enterprise search technology is important as well because it enables auditors and legal staff to locate information relevant to an audit or legal proceeding, regardless of where that information is stored: Web sites, blogs, wikis, intranets, extranets, desktops, legacy data stores, email servers, etc.

Because the eDiscovery process can be extraordinarily expensive, many organizations are looking for ways to reduce that cost, and in-sourcing eDiscovery offers one such opportunity. OpenText eDiscovery Early Case Assessment gives your in-house legal team the ability to search for and collect content for legal holds, along with the ability to cull and process content. This significantly reduces many of the risks associated with eDiscovery, the dependence on expensive outside vendors, and the volume of content that must be sent for review.

But information governance isn’t just about following rules, or proving that you’ve done so. Regulations inherently describe optimal business operations. Thus, by practicing “active compliance,” organizations can ensure that they adhere to industry-established best practices and procedures.

While there are any number of point products on the market, organizations are well-served to consider the long-term goals and the interrelation necessary between various technologies. Enterprise Content Management provides a sound platform for implementing an information governance strategy, and OpenText offers a complete ECM solution that addresses all requirements for a true enterprise information governance strategy.