With regulatory pressures driving firms to put tighter controls on electronic communications and records management, Paragon is seeing a marked increase in the number of firms looking for help in managing business communication and records.

“It’s not the same problem for all industries,” said Matt Olson, ediscovery Practice leader for financial services. “In the financial services industry, the drive is to comply with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure defined in December 2006,” he said. That definition incorporated “writings, drawing, graphs…and other data in any medium.” "The number of business transactions that are conducted by phone and Internet require that business risk be managed proactively, that is, before litigation drives the need for producing all relevant communications,” Olson said. “And, as the sub-prime fallout continues, firms need to prepare for a wave of litigation to support legal discovery of electronic communications,” Olson added.

The leader of Paragon’s life sciences records management program, Doug Vargo echoes Olson’s observations. “In Life Sciences, records retention is a concept with a degree of maturity – the question is where enterprises are on the maturity curve and whether that is consistent across the organization,” Vargo said.

Vargo developed a five-phase Maturity Model that helps firms plot their records management maturity and understand what it would take for them to move from one phase to a more defined, or optimized phase. The model helps sweep in electronically stored information -- with its rapidly replicable and dynamic characteristics – such as email, IM, and other sources.