FileBank's Archive Center - Where Documents Go to Die

 

Archiving and tracking files is not just about storage. A company needs to do some major research when searching for a facility that is safe enough to store their documents. FileBank tracks our client’s files and advises them when they are ready for destruction. Clients also have the option of shredding their own files. Or, they would rather have the full service by us, which is shredding documents either at our facility, or at the client’s facility with one of our shred trucks. Our point here is, if need be, clients can store their documents with us, and never have to worry about them, or see them again.

Our shred truck is of extremely high technology, and is the most used truck we own. The metal teeth of the motor turn hot, the paper turns into dust, and before you know it, there is a combustible solution; completely eco-friendly.

FileBank’s Archive Center currently  stores over 700,000 cubic feet of containers, and over one million individual files, with still more room to grow. We are 4-stories tall and completely fire-proof and flood-proof. One major test with our facility to our clients was when Hurricane Sandy attacked New Jersey. Massive flooding all over the Tri-State Area, and we at FileBank were able to sleep well at night knowing our building was able to withstand winds up to 125 miles per hour. Also we are the very first building to be built in Bergen County, New Jersey, with an underground rainwater collection system, which obviously helped tremendously during Hurricane Sandy.

Our main concern of ours is to ensure that we have all the amenities needed to make our clients feel like they chose the right facility for their files, and I believe we've done a pretty good job thus far.

Wish to learn more about our services, make sure to check out our website.

Make sure to stay connected!!

 

Sincerely,
Greg Copeland
President, FileBank Inc.

Dumont Diaries

New things are always happening at FileBank as we improve our services for you, our clients! As you may have heard, we have recently engaged Dumont as our new client. We are helping them jump into the 21^st century along side with their mayor and staff.

Our services will change their offices into organized, and pleasant working environments. I hope you stay along for the ride as we track how their everyday lives are changed through our system.

The city of Dumont’s government serves over 17,000 people, which naturally means that they have a lot of paperwork to deal with. Starting with the Building Department, FileBank is helping Dumont to scan their blueprints and papers associated with each house and building within the city limits.

When finished, Dumont will easily be able to access the documents related to each building. Finding the repair work done on a particular house ten years ago will become a breeze. Steve Cavadias, the director of the Building Department, will be working closely with us as we begin to show Dumont how amazing this transformation can be.

When finished, we will be moving on to the Clerk, Finance and Payroll departments for their own extreme makeovers. Our archivist and staff will frequently visit Dumont onsite to demonstrate the computer system so they are easily able to access their documents.

Customer service, naturally, is our most important goal! We are working to go above and beyond because we know how difficult the transition to paperless can be. But we can assure you that it is worth the momentary difficulties and we hope that after seeing Dumont’s transformation, you will become a convert too.

As always, feel free to check out our website at www.filebankinc.com or give us a call at 972-279-4411. We are always happy to talk with you!

Metadata: What Digitization Can Tell You About Your Own Organization

One moment of truth arrives for every type of organization: the point at which you have to determine if you are meeting your goals, selling your product, making that difference that you want to make. In the digital era, these types of moments are influenced constantly by the information exchanged over the Internet. To know whether you’ve reached one of them, you need to be connected. And increasingly, to be able to recognize them, you need to have a huge amount of information about your own organization.

Metadata is exactly the type of information that your organization will need to determine if its goals are met. Metadata tells you how your internal numbers have stacked up: whether it has to do with very concrete considerations like accounting and payroll, or less tangible ones like quality of your product, the nature of your client base, etc.

Is it possible to track metadata regarding the documents you store in your office? Of course! At FileBank, part of my job is to keep track of totals regarding various aspects of each client’s account with us. I am able to tell a client about simple tallies like how many boxes of which type they have stored with us, but also which boxes are ready to be destroyed and when, whether the organization will be regularly producing more of the content of those boxes, or whether the majority of the organization’s collection is to be permanently stored. All of this type of information classifies as metadata.

FileBank’s analytics software also takes advantage of metadata, except it takes the numbers on the documents themselves – accounting tallies, for example – and analyzes these numbers to perform numerous types of financial forecasting that will help your business stay ahead of the curve. Our software shows you the precise type of information you need to be prepared for that moment of truth. It arms you with the knowledge to face any situation your organization might encounter, especially an economic one. With the nation’s economy seemingly stuck in a permanent state of volatility, it is knowledge that is sure to come in handy.

So I hope you too will start to embrace metadata in your workplace. Using it will not only put you ahead of the curve in terms of technology, but it will also make the results from your work that much more potent.

Until next time,

Vanessa Banti
Master Archivist

Sowing the Future’s Harvest: Working with Big Datasets

Big data is one of those concepts that few people can envision in their mind’s eye. Personally, I try to imagine a stack of paper that could be digitized into one gigabyte of information. Then I imagine stacks of paper that would fill 100 gigs of space. Then a terabyte’s worth, a whole server, a room of servers, ten rooms of servers, and on and on. Even with all these incremental steps, it is impossible to imagine how much data truly represents a “big” dataset. If we can’t even imagine it, how can we work with it, analyze it, search it to find the exact piece of paper among all the countless digital pages that we need for that day?

The McKinsey Global Institute recently published a report on the topic of big data , in which they discussed solutions that might be used to tackle this significant challenge of the future. They provide predictions and suggestions for how both government entities and the private sector will have to adapt to daily interaction with big data. McKinsey maintains a very positive outlook on how beneficial big datasets will be to society – FileBank shares this optimism, and we aim to harness it in every aspect of our work. FileBank CEO Greg Copeland recently had this to say about datasets and McKinsey's research on them: "The data gets bigger, the images more refined and consequently larger. The technology will from this pressure grow to meet these needs. The trends and benefits of this ever grander dimension will reap benefits to those who can sift through information and understand the driving undercurrent trends. "

But what does McKinsey’s research mean for the average sized organization, like a school, a small business, hospital, local government or office? In the future we will all have to use these big datasets efficiently, but how will we do it? Without a doubt, the key is familiarity and ease of use. It is one thing for technological wizards at groundbreaking companies to adopt big data, but quite another for a local employee. Once all of these trends become mainstream, and once platforms have been developed that can parse and sort through mountains of data with a single click, then the big data revolution will have truly arrived.

At FileBank, we believe that there are and will be many solutions available to both the public and private sector for handling big data in the future. While we develop those solutions within our own organization, we believe that keeping track of industry developments will be essential to all our customers. Please continue to check our blog for these industry updates and our analysis of them.

Until next time,

Vanessa Banti

Master Archivist