CASE STUDY #1
Merging Companies Face Dilemma In Locating Records

April 5, 1999

SITUATION:
An Acquiring Company accumulating over 20 companies internationally faced hundreds of thousands of documents to be merged. It discovered that something simple, like "purchase orders" had been described in as many as 36 ways. This difference in terminology and individual perceptions of what to call a document will cause costly delays, as well as create a liability in being unable to make necessary files available.

Legal Counsel, Senior Executives and The Board wanted to be able to translate and uniformly classify documents so that both sides of the deal could provide files that would be essential to ongoing operation.

APPROACH:
Infologics’ objective was to create a synergy between the merging companies’ records, products, people and processes by translating key electronic documents and paper records using the patented Uniform Subject Classification (USCS™) System that brings together and classifies all related information.

An investigation of both companies’ records showed that:

• There was no documented system to control the creation, maintenance, processing, retrieval, transfer, storage and destruction of paper and other media.
• There was no overall responsibility with the coordination of records management activities.
• There existed a wide range of misunderstandings as to exactly what practices, procedures, and controls that they expected to follow.
• Individuals could not easily find documents beyond their own organization and even had difficulty finding their own. Nothing was available to determine how long records were to be kept and were not aware of any formal procedure for the transfer of material to storage. Of the total records retained in assorted files and cabinets reviewed, there was as much as 50%, on an average, that could and should have been purged or moved to inactive records storage.
• Since no enterprise-wide classification system existed, a wide variety of practices and systems were operating among departments, workstations, and sections. The lack of a uniform classification system, there were multiple description of the same record.
• The structure of information in the files was individual-dependant, creating a situation where the loss or absence of a key individual would make it difficult to retrieve documents from the files. For this, and a number of other reasons, retrieval from most files rarely occurs, indicating the possibility that due to the tremendous amount of personnel turnover, there would be little available knowledge of what the files contain.

RESULTS:
Infologics implemented the classification technology of Uniform Subject Classification System throughout the organization. Organizational change underwent a smooth integration of records, permitting individuals to search, locate, and purge documents according to established corporate policy.