A record is any type of information that is created or received while doing business. Records take all sorts of forms: a written or scanned document, an e-mail or voicemail, a handwritten note, a chat or a video call transcript, a record in a database.

We shouldn’t leave records lying around. They contain important and often confidential information, and we don’t want that information to fall into the wrong hands. Besides all the business reasons for managing company records in a proper and regulated way, there are also legal requirements in the EU, Switzerland, the UK, USA, and many other countries, on how records should be managed, how long they should be retained, and when they should be destroyed. Failure to comply with those regulations can have heavy consequences for your organisation.
Many books have been written on Records Management and records’ lifecycles, but it all comes down to their creation, retention, and destruction.

Records can be created in many different ways. They can be received by e-mail or they can be scanned. A handwritten note can be a record. A transcript of a video call where certain decisions were made is certainly a record, as are chat protocols if they contain record-worthy information.

Once created, records must be managed and retained to meet legal, administrative, operational, or other requirements. Different records can have different legal and business requirements and retention periods, and we must ensure that records are never changed during the retention time.
The last phase of the records lifecycle is destruction. This must be done securely, and according to the retention schedules. A record of the destruction must be retained.