3 Unexpected Benefits of a Communications Archive
We’ve spoken at length about what to look for to maximize the ROI (and what to avoid) on your next archive.
But what about less quantifiable benefits? In this article, we spotlight three unexpected benefits of effective communications archives that aren’t easily quantified or measured but can still unlock business opportunities or advantages for your organization.
Why it matters
While it’s important to nail down the ROI of a communications archive with measurable indicators, unquantifiable benefits can’t be overlooked. An effective technology investment can have many hidden benefits that can expand or support your business strategy.
1. Your archive can enable business growth in other markets and regions
Businesses in regulated industries must archive their communications data to enable supervision and monitoring. However, compliance gets complex if you do business in multiple jurisdictions and need to comply with multiple regulatory entities.
For example, suppose you work for a financial services firm that serves California clients. In that case, you already have to comply and meet the requirements of California state laws (such as the California Consumer Privacy Act and California Privacy Rights Act) as well those mandated by U.S. regulatory bodies and laws like FINRA, SEC, and the Consumer Protection Act.
But what if your firm wants to expand to the U.K., other parts of Europe, South Africa or more? Now you’re faced with laws or regulators like the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority, the EU GDPR, or South Africa’s Financial Sector Conduct Authority.
And because it’s topical, let’s say your firm deploys a chatbot with generative AI responses. Now you have to consider the laws and regulations surrounding artificial intelligence of each region.
A communications archive that’s built to scale with your business is much better positioned to accommodate your firm’s growth and expansion by making it easier to quickly meet the regulatory requirements in other regions and jurisdictions.
2. Your archive can help avoid potential regulatory fines and penalties
Preventing a multi-million dollar fine can be the best cost savings measure — especially if your firm takes the stance that fines and litigation are a natural cost of doing business.
With recordkeeping continuing to be a key component of SEC’s examination priorities, your review and supervision decisions must be defensible. Non-compliance in your records management and supervision processes can result in severe penalties and reputational damage.
A communications archive that’s built for supervision and oversight enables your firm to defend and explain your compliance processes during regulatory agency reviews. This benefit can limit your firm’s exposure to potential fines.
3. Your archive can streamline or support other workflows
When you implement an effective archive, you often get more than just an archive. A powerful, effective archive can facilitate a variety of processes and needs such as security, data lifecycle, compliance, e-discovery and more.
For example, e-discovery has historically been a timely — and costly — endeavor. Compliance, legal and technology teams would often have to divert resources from their core goals and projects to search and retrieve specific records and data from multiple repositories.
This often results in a large amount of duplication that outside legal counsel would have to review, which quickly racks up on billable hours.
With a modern communications archive that automatically includes metadata of captured records and offers powerful search and retrieval tools, e-discovery is more efficient. Fewer employees are needed to find the necessary records, which can help a firm reclaim previously wasted resources on e-discovery.
Understanding the full value of an effective archive
There’s a lot to consider when calculating the ROI of your next communications archive. Specifications are easy to compare and measure: price, speed, types of content captured, etc.
But when it comes to opportunities, it’s a little less clear but no less important. Forrester recently published a Smarsh-commissioned Total Economic Impact Study, which dives into how Smarsh customers have achieved and exceeded their goals.
It’s an excellent resource that can reveal how other customers have realized hidden or unexpected benefits of what a top-tier archive can deliver.
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Scalable for organizations of all sizes, the Smarsh platform provides customers with compliance built on confidence. It enables them to strategically future-proof as new communication channels are adopted, and to realize more insight and value from the data in their archive. Customers strengthen their compliance and e-discovery initiatives and benefit from the productive use of email, social media, mobile/text messaging, instant messaging and collaboration, web, and voice channels.
Smarsh serves a global client base that spans the top banks in North America and Europe, along with leading brokerage firms, insurers, and registered investment advisors. Smarsh also enables state and local government agencies to meet their public records and e-discovery requirements. For more information, visit www.smarsh.com.
- RIA Compliance Requirements: Navigating Ongoing Regulatory Obligations - March 24, 2025
- California Public Records Act: What You Need to Know - March 17, 2025
- 3 Unexpected Benefits of a Communications Archive - March 13, 2025
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