Finding and sharing salient information amidst a multitude of records

McPherson added that the application works much better with smaller files than loading them all to a large database, but Magnum can also scale for larger file sizes. She expects the firm to continue to expand its use of Magnum, with arbitration work slated for usage in 2015.

What and where?

The Hanover Insurance Group, with an international property casualty business and 5,000 employees across the globe, needs to manage records for its different policies, including the location of different documents and the scheduled destruction of some items. The first step in managing all of that is determining what files are where, according to Linda Luperchio, director of information lifecycle governance and e-discovery for The Hanover Insurance Group.

She added the information lifecycle work in August 2012, and found that the tool she had been using for e-discovery, Exterro, with the addition of the Genome data mapping module, was also the best solution for the data mapping project.

“You want to know where your records are. Your governance is hurt if you don’t do it right,” Luperchio explains. “You have to manage your records properly or you will drown.”

Genome enables The Hanover to build and maintain an up-to-date directory of electronic files that mirrors the evolving data source inventory, including things like e-mail systems and file servers. Records can be associated with different categories, with the ability to add different categories as needed.

“We wanted something that would grow with us,” Luperchio says. Exterro provides e-discovery and other records management needs in a single platform.

In the last year alone, The Hanover has added SharePoint adapter and Legal Hold Software modules, which enable the company to create repositories and identify records that no longer need to be kept so that they can be destroyed. Luperchio expects to add other Exterro modules as The Hanover’s needs grow.

With the increasing number of records and need to keep track of them and pull them together efficiently, the demand for KM technology for records and information management will continue to grow.