Measuring the impact of records management

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a source of reliable, empirical data regarding the return on investment (ROI) that can be achieved by an organization through various approaches to improving the management of records. It is hoped that these data will help address the current dearth in such evidence in relation to records management and provide a source of citable reference data as part of the business case for investment in records management elsewhere. The paper also aims to explore some of the issues and challenges surrounding the measurement, analysis and interpretation of performance data in relation to records management.Design/methodology/approach – This paper draws on the collected outputs of six UK higher education institutions, each of which were funded to pilot the JISC infoNet Impact Calculator. All six of these projects used the same transparent tool (the Impact Calculator) as the basis for their data collection and analysis, but each chose to apply it to different records man...