Filovault, a business to business venture created last year to cater to those companies, institutions and foundations to outsource their records management due to space and resource constraints, hopes to cash in on the growing need for better corporate governance.
“As companies and institutions become more compliant with document retention periods and abide by international standards, their volume of stored documents will tend to swell,” said managing director Nael Zantout. “Since managing archives properly involves a great deal of resources, fire prevention, 24 hour security, software, and manpower, most international companies are looking to outsource this function to a specialized company, which can ensure two key things: safety and availability of files when needed. Loss of files can mean litigation/audit risks”
The archiving business model, already popular in the West and more recently in Egypt and the UAE, rests on the concept that non-core activities such as record keeping /archiving are being outsourced for cost savings and removal of strains on internal resources. Filovault has rehabilitated a warehouse facility just 15 minutes from BCD, employing climate control, security and fire detection and prevention. Filovault also has a strategic software partnership with US based O’Neil, arguably the global leader in the field.
According to Zantout, a large percentage of multinational companies worldwide use outsourcing for their archiving and this process is viewed favorably by auditors and compliance heads as it lessens the risks and costs especially since most accounting and administration documents need to be maintained for ten years or more. Clients who sign up, get a number of bar coded boxes along with a cd-rom to catalogue the contents of each box, enabling file searches at a later point. Filovault allows clients to consult their inventory or order boxes at any time using their online feature.
“The whole system operates solely on barcodes ensuring confidentiality at all times,” said Zantout, who cites a large US multinational as well as top insurance and financial institutions as clients, along with several smaller foundations, law firms and schools. “We guarantee rapid retrieval of documents when needed along with an array of services such as digitization, destruction, and an onsite audit/conference room.”
