Before the email archiving software selection process starts or any implementation meetings begin, something more important must occur first.  Quite a few questions regarding email retention policy must be answered.  This is a difficult, but very necessary process. It will be time well spent, while making the implementation of an archiving solution much smoother.

What are the company’s current document retention policies? If there aren’t any policies, now is the time to establish how long and how far back email documents should be stored for immediate retrieval.  If there are established retention policies, a review of what works and what doesn’t is required. Does anything need to be modified?  Are policies that worked previously, appropriate for the current business climate?

Other driving factors that dictate retention policy is regulatory and eDiscovery requirements. Depending on a company’s industry, Sarbanes-Oxley will impact decisions for document retention periods. So a review of how the company currently handles these requirements must be performed.

Now is the time to review current manual or semi-automated retention procedures. This allows for early adjustments and modifications. If current retention and retrieval processes are outdated or inefficient, an archiving solution will only automate the same ineffectiveness.

Certainly, it’s easy to say “we need to keep everything”.  In the early stages of implementing retention policies, this might be an acceptable temporary place to start.  Anything is better than nothing.  At some point, there has to be a balance between specific retention periods and realistic storage requirements being be put in place.

Consider retention alignment for all current document management and communication policies.  If email is kept for 4 years and other documents are kept for 7 years, there could a serious misalignment that produces a negative impact.  If any eDiscovery requests come up, a company could be liable for producing 7 years of email, if other internal document management systems retain information for 7 years.

Identify which departments are responsible  owners of retention policy compliance. Does the ownership for storing and retrieving historical email lie with one department or is it interdepartmental? There is too much at stake to expect the IT department to take sole ownership.  Beyond the legal department, there may be departments that have specific compliance specifications for document retention.

Taking the time to tweak or implement retention policies is worth the effort. When an archiving solution is introduced, this prep work facilitates a company realizing immediate benefits in a shorter period of time.  Misunderstandings, miscommunications and confusion are eliminated when eDiscovery or regulatory requests are initiated.