The completion of a field decommissioning project should not mark the end of the asset’s data management activities. On the contrary, to ensure that data that could prove invaluable to future Energy Transition activities remains available, a specific ‘end of life’ data management strategy is needed.
In this blog we share our experience of enacting one specific part of such a strategy – locating, organising, rationalising and digitising selected physical records – and the importance of considering a decommissioning strategy for your physical records.
Seven reasons to rationalise and digitise your physical data
1. Reduce costs of physical storage
Paying for physical data to be stored offsite in record centres can be an unnecessary expense, especially if the data is no longer needed and in future nobody will know what’s in the box or how to find it.
2. Helps compliance
Compliance is a reality for most businesses. Document rationalisation and scanning makes it easier for your company to fulfil its legal and regulatory obligations for data submission. Digital files can be organised, indexed and produced quickly to meet the demands of even the strictest regulator.
3. Saves time
Scanned documents can be retrieved quickly and easily without having to leave the desk.
4. Enhances staff collaboration
Document scanning makes it easy to share documents and collaborate on projects without having to reproduce information on paper. Staff in multiple locations can access and view electronic documents simultaneously.
5. Improves data security
Protecting hard copy information can be difficult. Scanned documents can be encrypted, password protected, and roles and entitlements used to control access.
6. Easy file retrieval
Scanning, combined with OCR makes it quicker to find files
7. Access to knowledge
With ML/AI capabilities, search scanned documents for contextual information and the corporate knowledge and wisdom gained from past endeavours.
If you are planning or have recently completed a field decommissioning and you want to find out more about decommissioning your physical records and gaining access to high value data, contact us today.