There are several key business drivers for establishing a records compliance management program:

External Drivers

• Regulatory compliance – all organizations are regulated by specific legislation which dictates which electronic records they need to retain and, in some instances, how and for how long they need to be retained. This includes industry-specific regulations such those from the SEC and FDA in the US and their equivalents worldwide as well as broad-reaching legislation such as Sarbanes-Oxley. Organizations need to understand which regulations they must be in compliance with and what policies and procedures need to be implemented and enforced to ensure compliance – decisions that require the collaboration of IT, compliance, records management and often legal teams and business units. The risks of not demonstrating compliance can be high:
  

• Multi-million dollar fines
• Long-term prison sentences
• Damaged reputation and lost sales

• Legal discovery – legal discovery costs for electronic records have become the largest uncontrolled cost in US business today. In many cases costs are incurred due to inferior electronic records management and lack of processes between legal and IT departments. The costs and difficulties surrounding electronic discovery are exacerbated by organizations' continued reliance on back-ups (rather than policy-based archiving), non-enforceable retention policies which result in evidence being inadvertently destroyed, disparate repositories and incompatible systems. Litigators are able to take advantage of the inability of many organizations to produce electronic records, such as e-mail, within mandated time limits and they are using it as a means of forcing out of court settlements.