Do You Need Legal Hold?
December 16, 2014
By Susan J. Campbell
TMCnet Contributing Editor
While communications are likely an important part of your business, yours may also be one of those companies that must adhere to specific budgetary guidelines when assessing the costs associated with these communications. To do so, you may have invested in call accounting and can appropriate the necessary costs to the right departments.
These steps help you maintain control and compliance internally, but what if legal stipulations are such that compliance is your number one priority? You likely lean on call recording for compliance, but the demands surrounding regulations call for more. If your company is involved in litigation or regulatory action, you must have a few other weapons in your arsenal to ensure compliance.
To that end, ISI (News - Alert) recently posted a blog on a new release from Verba 8 known as Legal Hold. A recent update to its Collaborative Recording, Legal Hold keeps all relevant information preserved. In other words, it keeps all data from all interactions safely archived and easily accessible, even on short notice. This capability is essential for employment matters, business disputes and even personal injury cases.
In today’s markets, the reality is that too many organizations are ill-prepared to respond to litigation or provide requested information. A Law Practice Today survey of more than 100 information technology managers found that only 6 percent were confident in their ability to field requests for electronic discovery. This means that a staggering 94 percent are ill-equipped to reach compliance or even respond to simple requests.
At the same time, compliance demands are ever-changing, which can contribute to an organization’s lack of trust in its own capabilities. The Legal Hold feature from Verba 8 allows for consistent changes, extending to users the ability to access workflows, control, manual and automatic labeling, data retention, search/playback and speech analytics.
How this works into your organization depends greatly upon your current communications design and the compliance guidelines placed upon you. The key to its successful implementation and execution is to clearly outline the expectations on your organization and how you can meet requests at any time.
While every organization hopes to achieve complete compliance so that a request for information never has to be fulfilled, the reality in call accounting is that requests will be made. If you can easily respond and get on with your day, the investment in the extra tools is worth it.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi