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Financial directors say 30% of companies at risk!

20th Jan 2006
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In the wake of the devastating Buncefield oil depot fire in Hemel Hempstead, Version One (www.versionone.co.uk) has researched the views of Financial Directors from 100 UK organisations. The purpose of the research was to discover whether their businesses could survive the total destruction of all hard-copy business documents (invoices, purchase orders, statements, payroll, despatch notes etc.).

30% of Financial Directors surveyed said that they would NEVER recover if their paper business documents were destroyed by a fire, flood, terrorist attack etc. 32% of organisations would take a minimum of 12 months to recover and the remaining 38% would take approximately 6 months to recover. This is despite 60% of organisations claiming to have business continuity plans in place!

The financial cost of all business documents 'going up in smoke' is also significant. All organisations would incur some financial cost with 45% incurring at least £50,000. 32% of organisations would incur between £100,000 and £800,000 and 15% would have financial costs of more than £1 million!

Key concerns by organisations (if all paper documents were destroyed) include 'critical documents would be lost forever', 'there would be legal and VAT implications' and 'the business would lose SOX compliance'. In addition, some organisations state that the destruction of all hard-copy documents would:
˜ 'Cause the business to go under'
˜ 'Be catastrophic'
˜ 'Be a nightmare'
˜ 'Result in redundancies'
˜ 'Make it virtually impossible to chase debt'

'This highlights the complete absence of measures organisations are taking to ensure business continuity', says Tony Bray, director of document management and imaging company, Version One. 'Many organisations think disasters such as the devastating fire at Buncefield just won't happen to them. This mentality is extremely alarming! The only way organisations can ensure all business documents are protected in the event of a fire or flood, is by electronically storing all documentation from invoices and purchase orders through to despatch notes and technical drawings as well as keeping back-up copies off-site.'

In a recent article, Digby Jones, director general of the Confederation of British Industry, expressed similar concerns about the lack of business continuity plans at the Buncefield oil depot and neighbouring companies,

"Evidence suggests that not as many companies had computer back-ups and other financial records stored off-site, as they should."

Tony adds, 'Not only is electronically storing all incoming and outgoing documents common sense from a business continuity point of view, it also saves significant amounts of time, money and storage space.'

-Ends-

Notes to Editor

About Version One

Version One Ltd, a rapidly growing company established in 1989, is the author of a range of document management and imaging software solutions.

Version One's software won a Green Apple environmental award 2005 and made the shortlist for Enterprise Software Package of the Year in the 2005 Accountancy Age Awards. The Company was also shortlisted for the Information Management Awards 2005 (IM2005). Version One is officially named as one of the fastest-growing technology companies (in the North and Midlands) in the 2005 'Deloitte Fast 50 Awards' and was named one of the fastest growing-technology companies in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) in the 2004 'Deloitte European Technology Fast 500 Awards'.

Version One's leading document management system - DbArchive - automatically archives electronic copies of all outgoing and incoming business documents. The latest launch, DbCapture, uses advanced Artificial Intelligence and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technologies to dramatically reduce manual data entry. Both solutions save dramatic amounts of time and money.

Contacts:

Liz Ebbrell, Version One
[email protected] http://www.versionone.co.uk
+44 (0)1625 856500 or 07917 634 705

Catherine Murphy, Version One
[email protected] http://www.versionone.co.uk
+44 (0)1625 856500 or 07771 746056

Tony Bray, Version One
[email protected] http://www.versionone.co.uk
+44 (0)1625 856500 or 07778 648082

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