3. Governance and compliance
In regulated industries such as healthcare, financial services and energy industries, noncompliance with government and industry regulations can lead to sizable financial penalties, business disruption, tarnished reputations and even prison sentences in certain circumstances.
ECM systems have several features to help organizations meet governance and compliance regulations, such as records management (RM), retention management, destruction, eDiscovery and audit trails.
ECM systems also automatically maintain detailed audit logs, recording explicit details such as all document creations, edits, views and deletions. These audit trails are a core requirement in any compliance or governance function.
Examples: Governance and compliance with HIPAA and eDiscovery
The U.S. healthcare’s HIPAA law has strict retention requirements that dictate documents must be retained for a minimum of six years from when the document was created.
Using a high-capability content management system, an administrator can securely automate retention in-place, meaning tedious tasks like copying records and retained documents to a dedicated repository are over (and time is saved for team members).
A more advanced example occurs in the legal industry, where attorneys may be required to provide digital files and records, such as emails, documents, account reports and chat messages, that are relevant to a litigation case. The process of identifying, collecting, preserving and delivering electronic information is called eDiscovery. During the eDiscovery process, legal teams halt all processing or disposing of pertinent information, known as implementing a legal hold.
While eDiscovery platforms exist, an ECM system offers a holistic approach with features that consider the organization as a whole, giving teams the ability to search faster and more efficiently with better results.
> Learn about Hyland’s governance capabilities