Industry news

Access continues to grow through acquisitions

Access, headquartered in Livermore, Calif., has announced its acquisition of Safe Site Northwest Inc. and DataSite Business Archives Inc. The two companies are recognized by the brand name DataSite Northwest, which is the largest privately held records and information management (RIM) services provider in the Pacific Northwest.

Access also has announced the recent acquisitions of Archive Management Services of Phoenix and Spaceport of Orlando, Fla.

Dave Heric and Dale Mitchell founded DataSite in 1993, and in 2001 Doug Jordan joined the company as a third partner, according to DataSite’s website. The company offers records storage, off-site data storage, shredding and document scanning services.

With this acquisition, Access broadens its operations in the Seattle area, including the Washington cities of Tacoma, Kent and Renton; the counties of King, Pierce and Snohomish; and the area’s technology corridor, which includes Bellevue and Redmond, Wash. Access currently serves a wide band of the Pacific Northwest coastline south through Portland, Eugene and Medford, Ore.

“The acquisition of DataSite, due to the considerable size of its client base as well as the breadth of its capabilities, adds significantly to our strength in the Seattle area,” says Rob Alston, Access CEO.

Heric, a past president of PRISM International, the trade association for the records management industry, will continue, along with Mitchell and Jordan, to consult with Access during a transition period.

Access President John Chendo says, “DataSite’s owners embraced this new relationship from the start. They appreciated what growing with Access would mean to their clients and to their team.”

Amina Steblay founded Archive Management Services in 1994 to, as she says, “give the client the absolute best service possible and maintain the best technology available in the records management industry.”

In a letter to her clients explaining the transition, Steblay writes, “Of all the people I have met in this industry, I truly feel that the Access leadership will best look after the kinships with my clients that I value so much. Now, my husband, Craig, and I are looking forward to retirement.”

Access says it plans to relocate all of Archive Management Services’ accounts to Access’ Phoenix record center facilities. Woody Colebank, Access branch manager in Phoenix, and his team will lead the integration of these accounts assisted by the company’s Southwestern Regional Vice President Robert Cummings, Access says.

Kim Greber, Access general manager in Orlando, will lead the integration of the accounts from Spaceport, assisted by Southeastern Regional Vice President Peter Berndt.

Chendo adds, “Our record center facilities in Apopka (Fla.) represent the finest the industry can offer, and I know that our newest clients in the Southeast will appreciate the high level of service they will now experience with Access.”

Access, which bills itself as the largest privately held commercial RIM services provider in the U.S., serves 30 markets in the U.S. and Latin America. The company is backed by growth equity firm Summit Partners, with offices in Boston; Palo Alto, Calif.; London; and Mumbai.

FastFact

Javelin Strategy & Research’s 2013 Identity Fraud Report Finds that One in four data breach notification recipients became a victim of identity fraud.

RhinoDox secures business process automation orders

Document and information management solutions company RhinoDox, based in Chicago, reports that it closed on several orders for Filebound by Upland, Austin, Texas, in the third quarter 2013.

“While a number of our clients use a combination of the broad services and technologies we offer to meet current and future document and information management needs, we are seeing a large and notable shift in clients who are deciding to go with business process automation (BPA) solutions as a day-forward process to manage their business critical information,” says Justin Ullman, RhinoDox CEO.

Ullman says clients are implementing BPA solutions because of the many benefits they provide, including shortening cycle times, realizing return on investment, increasing efficiency and productivity and meeting contractual obligations to go digital.

RhinoDox says its team works with clients to understand their information management needs and to design and implement solutions based on Filebound workflow automation solutions.

RhinoDox says it closed contracts on the following BPA orders in the third quarter of 2013:

A legal property assessment firm in Chicago—RhinoDox provided a Filebound On-Demand solution that includes automated workflow and e-forms to assist the firm in assessing and reassessing real estate value—a task legally required in Illinois every three years after a property is placed on tax rolls. Previously, data were manually entered for each property on as many as seven forms. The forms were sent to clients for signatures and returned to the firm for scanning and printing before being sent to clients again. RhinoDox designed more than 30 e-form workflow processes, including bundled e-forms, to eliminate redundant data entry and to integrate with an existing database to look up and populate fields for existing properties. The solution reduces manual entry and mailing costs, minimizes potential for error related to data entry and eliminates time spent on the physical transport of forms for approvals by handling that process now through email, RhinoDox says.
 

A material handling company on the West Coast—RhinoDox hosts services to import and index accounts payable invoices supplied by the customer into Filebound On-Demand. This solution provides the client’s 70 branch offices with immediate access to invoice information and replaces a seven-to-10 day process that relied on branches mailing invoices to corporate for data entry, approval and processing. The new solution serves more than 100 users.
 

A financial company in Chicago—RhinoDox and Filebound professional services teams devised a conversion module to automatically convert COLD (computer output to laser disk) data streams into a format to facilitate viewing, searching and printing via the report viewer application in Filebound On-Demand, the company says. This solution replaces a proprietary viewer the financial company used that required time-intensive manual entry. This enables automated access and search capabilities, including full text optical character recognition, to 77 stock exchange reports daily.
 

A service organization in Boston—RhinoDox says it has built 12 templates in Filebound Capture to automate extracting a high percentage of information existing on invoices with the remainder being added via point-and-click technology. RhinoDox has implemented Filebound On-Demand to ERP (enterprise resource planning) QuickBooks 2014 integration for database look-up, and repeat invoices are automatically coded, eliminating the need to manually enter invoices into QuickBooks. According to RhinoDox, the customer is now processing invoices 50 percent faster than it did previously.

A material handling company in Chicago—RhinoDox developed an e-form service repair ticket for the client’s 185 service technicians to use in the field for populating information and e-signatures. When the technician submits the ticket, it populates information and loads the ticket image into the Filebound On-Demand Workflow approval process that in turn populates it to an ERP solution for processing, RhinoDox says. Immediate benefits include quicker approvals, elimination of fees for the old process that relied on tablets and software to generate service tickets and faster billing times.

Kent Record Management receives NAID AAA certification

Kent Record Management, Grand Rapids, Mich., has achieved AAA Certification for mobile paper/printed media destruction at its Benton Harbor, Mich., location from the National Association for Information Destruction (NAID), Phoenix.

Kent Record Management CEO Greg George says, “We are proud to achieve NAID certification in less than one year of acquiring our Benton Harbor location. Our Benton Harbor staff completed NAID certification with our Muskegon staff, who already operate a NAID certified location.”

He adds, “We remain committed to providing premium shredding services to our current and future clients, and NAID certification further exemplifies that commitment.”

NAID AAA Certification is achieved and maintained through an ongoing series of announced and unannounced audits of service providers’ facilities and in the field. Auditors verify the security of the applicant’s operations against a set of established specifications, including employee screening and monitoring, access control, written policies and procedures and video capture.

Kent Record Management offers physical record storage, online backup and recovery, hosted electronic records, scanning and shredding services.

FTC testifies before Congress on need for data security legislation

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reports that it testified before Congress Feb. 4, 2014, on the agency’s ongoing efforts to promote data security, reiterating its support for enacting a strong federal data security and breach notification law.

Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, FTC Chairman Edith Ramirez said businesses are collecting more personal information about consumers than ever before and rising reports of data breaches illustrate that these systems are susceptible to being compromised.

“Never has the need for legislation been greater,” the testimony states. “With reports of data breaches on the rise, and with a significant number of Americans suffering from identity theft, Congress needs to act.”

The testimony explains that to promote data security the FTC enforces several statutes and rules that impose obligations upon businesses that collect and maintain consumer data. These include the proscription against unfair or deceptive acts or practices in Section 5 of the FTC Act; the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act; the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA); and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

According to the FTC, its testimony stresses its bipartisan support for data security legislation that would enhance existing laws and strengthen the agency’s existing authority by giving it the ability to seek civil penalties. The FTC also recommends data security legislation that would provide it with jurisdiction over nonprofits, which have been the source of a substantial number of breaches.

The FTC also recommends Congress enact a federal law requiring companies to notify consumers when security breaches occur, the testimony states. Although most states have breach notification laws, a strong and consistent, national requirement would ensure that all consumers are protected, the FTC adds.