Published July 2019
Sponsored by Ipswitch, Micro Focus, Proofpoint and TeleMessage
Executive Summary
Electronic content archiving – the process of capturing, indexing and placing data into long-term storage for later search and retrieval – has been a best practice for many years, particularly in industries that are more heavily regulated, such as financial services, energy, life sciences, healthcare and government.
The primary role of archiving has traditionally mostly about defense, such as retaining copies of business records and other important documents that might be needed as part of a legal action, or to have the ability to respond to a regulator’s request for information. However, archived data in email, text messages, social media posts, files and other content contains a wealth of information about an organization that is rarely, if ever, available from other sources. For example, a properly managed, next- generation archive that combines data capture with good analytics can be used for a variety of proactive purposes:
- It can show how quickly salespeople respond to inquiries from prospects and customers and if there is a relationship between the speed of response and the likelihood of orders or renewals.
- It can help to gauge customer sentiment and provide indicators of problems before they have a chance to manifest themselves as a problem, such as a customer switching to a competitor.
- It can determine which employees are being treated poorly by their managers and so are more likely to commit fraud or a breach of data.
- It can determine how information actually flows in an organization that might be at odds with the way that things are supposed to happen.
- It can find communications that are sexually harassing, racially insensitive or indicative of other types of employee misbehavior.
In short, an archiving solution can be used for both defensive purposes and as a proactive tool to glean insight and intelligence about an organization’s operations and to detect problems before they turn into big problems.
