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New demands on how businesses are required to document, manage, and access records and sensitive business information is placing new pressure on the skills needed by professional records managers to deliver on their businesses information management needs. This includes ensuring the right level of compliance and confidentiality as well as ensuring information can be easily accessed by the right person when required. Long gone are the days of information management being a bullet point on a long job description, hidden beneath a range of administration duties that all take precedence over recor...

One of the main concerns with offsite document storage is the retrieval of records when they are needed in a time critical manner. Compu-Stor have the room to store your records and the systems to make sure that you can identify and locate your documents quickly and easily. All Compu-Stor customers have access to our easy to use, unique online records management system, CIMS. Our Complete Information Management System (CIMS) allows customers ultimate control of all their records from any device – PC, tablet or smartphone, without the need for additional resources,...

Access to accurate records for operational and strategic reasons is important for businesses, as professional, accountable and reliable records management can enhance your overall productivity, efficiency and security. A strategic approach to information management can prove a valuable tool for your business. Information management is a business-critical function. To stand out in today’s competitive business environment, businesses need to constantly be on the lookout efficiency and cost improvements. Information Management vs Document Storage Document storage is a general term for the holding...

The simple process of document imaging, or document scanning , combined with effective document storage and management can enormously lift office productivity by providing staff with access to business-critical information at their fingertips with the ability to locate important information in seconds. Document scanning to convert paper-based information to electronically stored and managed images has a wide range of benefits for all businesses, including increasing productivity by reducing the time looking for files or documents and minimising the costs associated with hard copy storage, dist...

The new digital ecosystem presents a wide range of complex security and privacy challenges. For a document and records management strategy to work, it needs to provide flexible, user-friendly ways to store and access records and data. A US report into The Challenges in Managing Records in the 21st Century[1] back in 2004 concluded that, “although computers were once thought to be ushering in the age of the “paperless office,” we are experiencing exponential growth and replication of records. Moreover, the management of records no longer falls strictly to a record management unit or an administ...

It has been revealed that the Commonwealth Bank lost the personal banking statements of almost 20 million customers, making it one of the largest financial services privacy breaches ever to occur in Australia.[1] The statements, containing customers’ names, addresses, account numbers and transaction details from 2000 to 2016, were stored on two magnetic tapes which were supposed to be destroyed by a sub-contractor last year after the decommissioning of a data centre. Privacy and confidentiality are more important than ever before. The secure disposal of your sensitive business information and ...

A digital office is a working environment in which information is stored and organised electronically and is easily retrievable. Document imaging allows users to view a computer-generated image of documents instead of the original paper. While this isn’t necessarily a paperless office, it is one step closer to achieving some of the benefits and efficiencies that can come from a paperless office. However, some people are skeptical about the productivity efficiencies gained by moving to a digital office. Quite often, this skepticism is due to a lack of understanding of the benefits. The top 5 be...

The average office worker uses a staggering 10,000 sheets of copy paper every year. Each four-drawer file cabinet in an office holds up to 12,000 documents, takes up to 9 square feet of floor space and costs $1,500 per year. Every 12 filing cabinets require an additional employee to maintain these records, according to US based association, the Paperless Project . Today’s competitive business environment demands that people have timely access to their most critical files and records that can be essential to business success. Loss of these documents or delays in retrieving them is not an option...

When it comes to working out what kind of digital records management is best for your business, is it really fair to compare the Cloud to Information Management? What are the differences between the two? The Cloud, amongst other things, provides an internet based storage solution. It enables businesses and users to upload, and download, documents and files to a Cloud account, which can be accessed from anywhere, so long as you have an internet connection. An added advantage of the Cloud is the ability to collaborate. Cloud based apps like Google Docs, enables employees to work on a single docu...

When it comes to document storage, it’s not uncommon for Australian businesses to want to manage it in-house, believing this is the best way to save time and money. However, it has been proven that outsourcing your document storage is actually more cost effective, and efficient than keeping it in-house. How? Efficiency Every single person has their own way of filing, and if you have several different people responsible for handling and organising files, you will very quickly find there are several different filing methods being used in the one work place. With an external document storage comp...

Regardless of size, for many businesses and government entities it can be quite difficult to manage large volumes of paperwork in an organised and planned way to enable security and ease of access. If you are in an office that relies heavily on physical paperwork, you will find it is quite easy to misfile or misplace documents, which can be a costly problem to have. According to Price waterhouse Coopers, finding a lost document can potentially cost a company $122 per document in terms of downtime and lost billings. With that, they have also estimated that 7.5% of all company documents are...

The paperless office is a goal for many Australian businesses who want to streamline efficiencies, reduce environmental impact involved in creating paper, and hopefully gain some cost savings along the way. However, while Australian businesses are certainly becoming less reliant on physical documents, the coming of the ‘paperless office age’ has certainly not been achieved by most. A 2016  survey into Australian customer preferences of print and digital  found some results which demonstrate that it’s not just business processes that need to change to achieve a paperless office, but c...

Good medical records management is not only a very important aspect of running a medical practice or hospital records department, but it is also an integral measure to ensuring adherence to the compliance of various state and federal governance’s relating to the storage, management and retrieval of medical records. Records management should be a priority for all health departments and medical departments. Across all states, medical businesses that hold health information must take reasonable steps to protect medical records from misuse and loss through unauthorised access, modification or disc...

Digital transformation has often been placed in the court of IT due to its digital nature. However, as these digital changes are more about operational improvement rather than IT implementation, it should be the function of Operations to be the most important influencer for a truly successful digital transformation; with Operations working in partnership with a skilled IT team. Amongst the many tasks that an Operations Manager or Operations Team are charged with is efficiency and productivity; driving best practice throughout all areas of the business. The goal of digital transformation is to ...

Last month, Compu-Stor celebrated 30 years in business as a family owned business, transforming from a WA based document storage business and growing into a national information management company. Compu-Stor is proud of our heritage and our longevity in the business and the fluidity we have to continually innovate to remain relevant and continue to deliver products and services to help our customers. Before document management was an official business function, most businesses kept all their files in filing cabinets, and depending on the size of the business, rooms would be dedicated to keepi...

What price would you put on the information your business creates, saves and shares? Information about proprietary products and services – that’s valuable – after all, it’s your IP. What about information on your customers? It certainly helps to know your customers and what their purchasing habits are. What about day to day work product, emails, word docs, spreadsheets? These are your everyday work activities that would be frustrating to have to recreate if you lost them. When placing a price on preserving your organisation’s data integrity, it’s important to recognise that the true cost to yo...

Setting up the right record keeping system for your business will help you work efficiently, meet legal requirements and strengthen customer and staff relationships. Good record keeping can help you protect your business, measure your performance and maximise profits. There are certain record keeping requirements for businesses across all states of Australia, and depending on your industry, there may be specific laws and requirements related to your sector. Here we look at the three different types of ways businesses hold and store documents. The Hoarder At work, hoarders tend to hold on to pr...

Family continues to drive growth of Compu-Stor products and services Australia’s largest family owned document storage and information management business, Compu-Stor, is celebrating 30 years in business this month. The same year the West Coast Eagles made their debut, and Scott married Charlene in Neighbours, Compu-Stor was first realised by Peter Manford, who had gained his experience working at Brambles Manford. Brambles Manford was the result of a buyout of the original Manford family business by Brambles, who for a time operated under the Brambles Manford name. Today, Peter’s sons, Jeremy...

Compu-Stor is proud to continually implement new and improved systems, policies and procedures, reinforcing our ongoing commitment to health, safety, environment and quality. This commitment is shared across the entire organisation and is deeply embedded in our company’s culture and business processes. We are thrilled to have recently updated our certification ISO 14001 Environmental, ISO 9001 Quality and AS/NZS 4801 OH&S. Compu-Stor achieved this third-party triple certification through Bureau Veritas, a world leader in testing and inspection ad certification services. While ISO certifica...

The development of digital technologies has resulted in the convenience of expanding knowledge. This access to at your fingertips data means businesses owners are able make business decision in almost real time, making a real impact on the business bottom line. It’s a simple formula:  Data = Information = Knowledge The purpose of an information management system is the quick and economical retrieval of files. A robust information management system should offer instant access to all your records in a way that is easy to search and retrieve. Furthermore, a good system will also facilitate w...