Every business has to watch their bottom line. While records management is an important function of your company, it will often take a back burner to other, more immediate concerns. Often, a records management program is only thought of when space becomes an issue or there has been a security break of some sort. Most view records management with a commercial facility as an "added" expense, failing to realize that they are currently paying for records management in some fashion already.

Here are a few pieces of information taken from "Why Records Management? Booklet** that shed some light on the "costs" of records management:

• In Fiscal Year 1998, the federal government found that one cubic foot of records could be stored in a records center for $1.59 annually, while that same cubic foot cost $23.10 to maintain in typical office space and equipment. **
• Sandy Santori, Minister, Management Services for the Canadian Province of British Columbia, reported in a 2002 speech that "the three contracts to private storage [records] facilities totaled $2.3 million in the last fiscal year. For every dollar spent to store [700,000 boxes of] records in these off-site centers, it is estimated that the government saves four dollars. **
• Traditionally, cost savings has been a primary benefit and has focused on such areas as the difference in space costs between expensive low-density office space and that for low-cost, high-density storage space for inactive records. **

What does this all mean? In essence, regardless of how you are storing your records currently, there is a cost associated with that. That cost could be in space being used that you could put to other uses, in the rental of self-storage  units, or in the cost of man hours necessary to maintain your records and find records as needed. In almost every instance, the cost of using a commercial center, such as Records Management Services, will inevitably be less than the cost of managing your records internally when real values are given to the costs associated with space and labor.

** "Why Records Management" from Professional Records & Information Services Management (PRISMS) International, a not-for-profit trace association providing education, networking, and advocacy services to their members and the business public.