Some of the numerical data shown are from sources which did not indicate their origin, their currency, their accuracy, or the methodology used to derive them. They are, then, suggestive rather than definitive.

“In FY 1998, one cubic foot of records could be stored in a federal records center for $1.59 annually while that same cubic foot cost $23.10 to maintain in typcial office space and equipment” (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration).

“Fully automated data entry, like the paperless office, remains a chimera. Business still lives by ink on paper.” Steven Manes, Forbes (February 21, 2000).

“E-mail, the most frequent use of the Internet, causes a 40% increase in paper use when introduced into an office” (PriceWatterhouseCoopers, reported in The Toronto Star.

“Speed, accuracy, and fatigue are worse when proofreading from a CRT than from paper.” Martina Ziefle in Human Factors and Ergonomics (1998).

“Organizations without retention programs can often remove from higher-cost offices areas as much as 55% of records being kept there--as either obsolete (to be destroyed immediately) or inactive (must be retained but may be transferred to a low-cost records center ” (Robert Allerding, CRM, FAI, records management consultant).

“Because they have taken no inventory, most organizations have no way of knowing what all their information assets are and where those assets are located” (Information Management Associates, Inc. hereafter “IMA”).

“At any given time, between 3 and 5 percent of an organization's files are lost or misplaced. The average cost of recreating a document is $180. Annual loses for a Fortune 1000 company with one million files is $5 million dollars” (Survey reported in Information Week).

“Six per cent of PCs will suffer an episode of data loss in any given year; each incident costs an average of $2,557 to fix, including costs such as retrieving and recovering the missing information, lost productitivity, technical services, and the data's average value” ( "The Cost of Lost Data Report", Dr. David Smith, Pepperdine University, 1999).

“[There] is no ‘archival’ [permanent] medium, and it is not a term to be used in ANSI material or system specifications” (American National Standards Institute, ANSI/AIIM TR2-1998).

“The current ANSI standard for maintaining unused data-bearing digita media is 40 degrees F and 20% RH” (ANSI).

“Costs of digital storage media will continue to fall indefinitely, but costs of maintaining and migrating digital information of permanent value through each significant change in hardware and software will eventually exceed costs of creating the information” (IMA).

“The volume of paper stock [in tons] made into file folders rises every year” (American Paper Institute).

“For every sales increase of $100 million (US) that a company experiences, it uses 8.8 million more sheets of paper” Technology Forecast, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, 2000).

“90% of records filed after the completion of a transaction are never referred to again” (Records Management, General Services, State of Tennessee; hereafter: “TN”).

“67% of data loss is directly related to user blunders, making them 30 times more menacing than viruses and the leading cause of data loss” (Tandberry Data, 1998).

“Active files typically grow at a rate of about 25% annually” (Cuadra Associates).

“Keeping some records but not others beyond their scheduled retention can increase exposure to negative inference in audit or litigation" (TN).

“The clerical cost of processing a form is thirty to fifty times the printing cost of the form” (Business Froms Management Association [BFMA]).

“When . . . the size limit of [hard drives] is reached [in about 5 years], the billions of bit of information on your drive will be so tightly packed that they may not be able to hold their magnetic charge.” Steve Wilkins, Quantum, in PC World, June 2000).

“Office workers can waste up to two hours a day looking for misplaced paperwork--at total of 500 hours (62.5 days) per year” (TN).

“Computer users spend 7.5 percent of their time on a PC looking for misplaced files.” (Survey reported in Information Week).

“Companies typically misfile 2% to 7% of their records” (From survey conducted by New York City chapter, ARMA International).

“30% of paperwork is useless and could be eliminated. 37% of photocopies made are unnecessary” (TN).

“7.5% of documents are lost forever” (Cuadra Associates).

“U.S. managers spend an average of 4 weeks a year searching for or waiting on misfiled, mislabeled, untracked, or ‘lost’ papers” (Cuadra Associates).

“Large organizations lose a document every 12 seconds” (Cuadra Associates).

“While physical volume of records will continue to be reduced through greater and greater information packing density, the number of records grows faster than the rate of disposal, and the need for maintaining accuracy of information, effective indexing, correct retrievals, and application of retention scheduling does not diminish” (IMA).

To find out more about information management and records management, please visit a link below:

    What is information management?

    Information management questions and answers

    Presentations on imformation management

    Do you need information management?

    What does records management do?

    About retention schedules

   Cost reduction/avoidance case study