Records Management involves methods of efficient and economic processing of company records /rem/. Records include various documents such as letters, offers, contracts, customer inquiries and procedures, financial statements, presentations, photographs, emails, excel sheets, notes. As records, they have a life cycle in the company (creation, use, maintenance, saving, storage, and destruction) that is subject to /iso15489/.

The most important reasons for the use of records management:

• 1. compliance with the local law
• 2. historization of the company’s documents (and meta data)
• 3. support of business processes and goals (for the purposes of work flow management)

Central to records management is to take a process- and dossier view, considering the entire life cycle. Besides the actual content, the record context is documented. Dossiers comprise of records that are ordered according to certain company relevant perspectives and allow an overview of business transactions.

Records facilitate company and legal audits in administrative, fiscal, legal and historical matters. For example, special policies to ensure record availability allow the storage of relevant records during legal proceedings. The company data processing activities that were mentioned earlier underlie suitable “schedules” that regulate the creation/saving/destroyal of records. For example, according to swiss law, the saved record pertaining to a bank client is generally to be destroyed after 10 years.