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Self Storage - An expensive alternative to a professional solution?

By Leo Kane

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If you are currently storing, or thinking about storing your business critical filing within a self managed store - you may like to read this...

Some 25% of all Self Store users are commercial businesses. The majority of these businesses utilise the seemingly flexible, secure and affordable storage rooms largely as a way to free up office space within their place of work. And what is the storage item of choice for these businesses? Their dusty old files that have been cluttering up the offices; in cabinets; on shelves; in boxes for what seems an eternity. These files are a pain, an inconvenience, an eyesore. We keep them for so long because legislation tells us that we must.

Well this is true - the main driving force for maintaining business records is indeed for litigation avoidance; regulatory compliance and also just for sound business practice. A large number of businesses though that choose to self manage their business records are doing so for a perceived financial saving and also a sense of control and ownership of those records.

But lets take a look at how a professional records management service can far outweigh a self managed solution on so many levels. We'll start by looking at some simple financial comparisons.

STORAGE COSTS

Without a doubt moving records from an in-house solution to a self managed store off-site will deliver a number of savings to a business. Most noticeably by moving records off-site a business doesn't tie up expensive office space (sometimes up to £100 sqft) with dead or slow moving documents. Move these files to a self managed store and you can realise some massive, immediate savings. However take a look at how much of that self managed room actually has records in it. How much is thin air? How much is aisle space? How much is taken up with racking? How many boxes of files can you sensibly store in that room that you pay for? Try calculating it back to a cost per box.

With a professional off-site records management solution you simply pay for what you store - nothing more, nothing less. Lets take a look at what additional savings can be realised when your business chooses a professional solution over a self managed solution. Assume a standard self store room of 100 sqft in size - this can sensibly hold on racking approx 250 standard (1.1 cuft) archive boxes filled with documents. A room such as this could cost somewhere in the region of £30-60 per week depending upon the type of room. So lets price it up in the middle. At £45.00 per week those boxes will cost you an average of £9.36 per box, per annum. Thats without worrying about added costs such as self storage insurance that is often required on top of this price. Depending upon volumes, with a professional off-site solution, the more you have often the cheaper cost per box you pay. Typically for 250 standard archive boxes you could expect to be quoted somewhere in the region of £0.20 - £0.50 per box per month. So again taking the middle ground here (£0.35 per box per month) that will equate to a cost of just £4.20 per box per annum to store. Even at the higher end (£0.50) it only works out at £6.00 per box per year. Legitimately then you could realise further storage savings of up to 50% or greater when compared to a self managed solution.

Imagine what the saving would be jumping straight from an in-house solution to a professional off-site managed solution.

COST OF ACCESS

Trying to place a cost on an internal activity is always going to be difficult but it is certainly worthwhile trying to identify the cost to the business. In a self managed store - the actions for placing records in to store and also retrieving items from store as and when files are needed will be carried out by your staff. So there is a clear labour and time cost associated with this activity but also you need to consider and factor in the opportunity cost of what that person is actually paid to be doing. For each time they are asked to retrieve a file or place some additional records in to storage you will be taking them away from their "day job". It is widely assumed that a true cost to a business of filing a single document is as much as £15 when handled internally by your own staff. Now think about all those times your business cannot locate a misplaced file. Remember it is highly unlikely that if you are running a self managed archive that you will have any kind of technological solution in place to track any of the records placed in store. Typically the most you can hope for will be a hand written listing or maybe a spreadsheet. This greatly increases the risk of records being misplaced. The absence of a robust tracking system and audit trail means that you can assume a cost of approx £90 per record - again made up of labour and time costs. Add on top of this again the opportunity cost and storing files in a self managed environment can become quite expensive - if you look at the true cost of doing so.

Moving to a professional offsite records management service not only guarantees the price you pay for each type of access, but by employing a professional service your business and your business records will benefit massively by being placed within an environment where technology is employed at every opportunity. Robust barcode tracking software is a prerequisite for all professional records management businesses and the employment of such software makes it all but fool proof when it comes to tracking files from A-to-B. With automated audit trails; wireless barcode tracking equipment; massive inventory possibilities your records are in very good hands.

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