Poor record keeping could result in heavy fines, claims Vaultium

London, 14 March 2011 – Small and medium sized businesses risk heavy fines as well as disruption, if they fail to keep adequate records warns Vaultium, one of Europe’s most secure online file sharing and collaboration solution providers.

Under a new proposed HMRC inspection regime, as many as 50,000 UK small businesses may not be keeping records in line with HMRC requirements. If, when an inspection takes place, records cannot be produced, firms risk a fine of up to £3,000. Other regulators are also taking a hard line as Record Management becomes central to meeting increasingly complex compliance obligations.

Vaultium is launching a new, easy to use online Records Management extension, in response to a growing number of requests from organisations wanting more cost effective and robust recording systems to support compliance and record retention requirements.

Traditionally the preserve of larger organisations or heavily regulated industries, Records Management has been somewhat of a mystery to SMEs. But times are changing, with organisations of all types and sizes, increasingly required to manage their business records. Retaining the right records and disposing of those that legislation and regulation say you must, is a time consuming and onerous task. Software solutions to this problem have traditionally been too expensive, difficult to implement, require specialist knowledge to deploy and operate and often do not deliver the benefits or outcomes sought.

May Ladd, CEO and founder, Vaultium comments “Traditional Records Management systems were overly complex and really only understood by experienced librarians and professional records managers. Businesses rejected changes brought on by records management practices, resulting in poor uptake and inconsistencies. Few understood the terminology, found the change management too overwhelming and simply couldn’t find the time to store, classify and tag information in the appropriate way.

“While Records Management provides great discipline, it should be easy to use, available to all and be integrated in to the day to day routine, without the need to change ways of working or require a great deal of training. Vaultium’s online Records Management extension is more than capable of supporting a whole raft of compliance and regulation needs. In conjunction with our private-cloud based solution, firms now have it within their power to implement an affordable and effective Records Management strategy.

“We are all becoming more mobile and working from numerous locations, we want to have instant, anywhere and anytime access. We also need to share our information in a secure manner with partners and third party organisations more frequently. This has implications, for example, under the Data Protection Act, where we often using many data processors, some of whom may be overseas, we have to have the right controls in place to limit access and retain a record of who did what, and when, including when information has been securely destroyed, disciplines that Records Management addresses.”

Vaultium’s new ultra-easy-to-use, affordable online Records Management extension is capable of supporting some of the worlds most sophisticated compliance regimes and provides functionality normally only found in much more expensive and complex systems, such as:

• Comprehensive audit histories and version control
• Store any kind file, instantly searchable content and metadata
• Ultra -secure, including ISO27001 support
• UK Data Protection compliant
• Manage long term records, archives and backup
• Tag vital records to help with disaster recovery and prevent important files from being deleted by accident
• Create and track retention and disposal schedules

Vaultium online Records Management is available as an extension to Vaultium’s Business Package – more details are available at www.vaultium.com/pricing