Off-site self-storage of company records - like holding back a tide of archival chaos
May 28, 2011
Off-site self-storage of company records starts well……lots of space; boxes neatly stacked on the floor or on shelves; tidy; organised. But then within a short period, the self-storage space is full of collapsing boxes, and it’s difficult or impossible to retrieve records.
The problem with self-storage is not insufficient storage space - the availability of additional storage units means there’s as much space as needed.
The problem is that managing records in off-site self-storage is like holding back a tide of archival chaos - the tide will eventually and inevitably come in.
It’s the nature of archives that causes off-site self-storage to degenerate into an inefficient, troublesome and high cost alternative to managed storage services:
Out of sight, out of mind. This is dangerous when it come to company records. Management would never let the primary office to descend into the chaos that frequently befalls archives in self-storage. If the most junior persons in the company are left to manage off-site storage - without the experience, awareness and possibly conscientiousness to the job well - then out of sight is bad news.
Archives - last on priorities, top of hassles. This is the same for almost all organisations. Corporate archives are important but it seems that attending to them can always be put-off to another day. If something is important but at the same time it’s the bottom of priorities, the mismatch will eventually give rise to problems.
Archives expand to fill the available space. There will never be enough space so self-storage will require continual culling of obsolete records, or taking on additional storage units or periodically relocating the records to larger units. All are time-consuming and expensive tasks and sources of risk to the accurate tracking of records.
Filing errors happen. Filing errors in self-storage are time consuming and expensive to resolve. We speak to many clients that have had to spend days and weekends to recatalogue records in self-storage in the desperate search for a vital file. Filing and refiling errors will happen.
Staff changes. We frequently hear along the lines of “It was really well organised when we had Mary taking care of the archives. She left and now look at this place!” The records quickly fall into disorder and then stay that way. Mary left 3 years ago!
Archive storage and retrieval is left to the most junior staff. Junior staff often don’t appreciate the importance of each and every file so don’t take the necessary care in cataloguing, storing, and refiling company records. They are charged with a difficult and unpleasant job in a remote location. The state of the records indicates to them that management doesn’t particularly care so, they subconsciously reason, why should I? By the time their short-cuts and errors are discovered, they’ll be back-packing around Europe or at their next job. Junior staff, archives and a remote location is a dangerous mix.
OH&S risk. Office staff being required to lift heavy boxes in a cluttered, poorly lit remote site is a recipe for injury, lost time and expensive rehabilitation. Â It’s just not worth it.
Managed off-site archive storage - a better alternative:
Managed off-site archive storage service eliminates all of these problems and generally comes at a lower cost than self-storage.
So if you’re considering off-site self-storage, contact us first to compare the simplicity of use and savings from our managed archive storage services.
If you have records in self-storage and are experiencing some or all of the problems detailed above, contact us to for a free no-obligation consultation as to how we can help undo the sins of the past and migrate your records to our managed archive storage services.