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June 13, 2005

What the Morgan Stanley Judgment Means

Many industries have had notable tipping points. The point at which everybody woke up and said, 'we have to pay attention to this'. Some within the records retention and document management sector say the recent $1.45 billion judgment against Morgan Stanley is that tipping point. A big number like that will get the attention of CEOs, COOs and general counsels.

Have we received more calls or questions from clients? Not really from our existing base but we do believe decisions to purchase are being made much faster because the ROI regarding legality is obvious.

Records retention issues related to Sarbanes-Oxley and previous regulatory rules has thrust EDM and ECM to the forefront for a while, but we've always been here. EDM and ECM shouldn't be viewed as a way to 'comply' with regulations, it should be a way to operate more efficiently. Managing your information from the beginning means compliance isn't such a scary thing after all.

The clients we do get because they are looking for compliance only are amazed at what we can offer them. They think compliance means putting all the documents in a repository. Anybody can store documents (or maybe not in Morgan Stanley's case), it's the intelligent retrieval that's the trick. It''s not the technology, it's the correct application of technology that creates the efficiency.

When we meet with a compliance-seeking client we start by asking how the documents might be searched for or the paths that they may take to multiple people. Often they don't want to go down this road, they think we're trying to 'pad' our proposal. After discussing the matter a bit more they realize that there is value in the solution and the 'proposal padding' is going to save them time and money.

What does the MS judgment mean? For the less-than-ethical sales people it's a great F.U.D. headline. For us it is an opportunity to switch the conversation from compliance to efficiency

On a related note, PR blogger Neville Hobson talks about some other issues related to Sarbanes-Oxley.

Posted by DocuVantage on June 13, 2005 06:01 PM

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