On 11/7/06, Nolene Sherman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> The idea of taking the responsibility for tracking close dates away from
> future employees by attaching a set retention period early on is an
> interesting idea, but how much of a trade off (keeping thing too long or
> too short as a result) are folks willing to make. This does seem to be
> the way that many electronic document management systems want to work --
> assigning a retention based on a save date or a last use date rather
> than some external event.

A good ERMS should allow for the use of event triggers with retention.
The use of last used date, or last modified date, last accessed all do
not take into account the nature of the records. At a former employer
the engineering department maintained all their reference material
electronically, IT proposed using the last accessed date as the
determining factor for moving the information to a nearline
environment. That solution did not work for Engineering since no one
knew when they might have to access a reference.

An ERM system should be able to connect to other applications via API
connections. For example if you use a contract management system and
you terminate a contract in that system, the ERMS should receive a
feed from that system that triggers the disposition process.
Considering that some contracts can run for years before termination
why not let the systems do the operations.

-- 
Peter Kurilecz CRM CA
Richmond, Va

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