We just released a whitepaper titled “Keeping What’s Yours: Environmental Data Preservation in Enviance,” which explores the value of preserving environmental data in a single enterprise-wide software system.
Maintaining quality data is the number one goal of any Environmental Health & Safety (EHS) department, but it’s not the only objective; preserving that all-important data is vital to running a successful environment compliance program.
So, why is this such a challenging problem for organizations?
Typically, EHS teams aren’t equipped with the right tools. Many organizations opt for spreadsheets and stand-alone or homegrown databases to monitor their environmental compliance. This exposes them to manual data entry errors, like duplicate data, which in turn results in bad data. It also greatly decreases the chance of preserving key environmental data, while dramatically increasing the cost to maintain that data. Conversely, businesses that opt for a single, enterprise-wide relational database can retain data for a longer time, at a more cost-efficient rate.
Using a single environmental management system, with a clear and transparent view of data companywide, can extend the half-life of environmental data from 2 to 3 years to 4 to 5 or longer; preserving it and substantially decreasing effort and compliance costs in the long run. Lost, unused or misused information is costly to recreate. The situation is further compounded by employee turnover—staffing changes can occur as often as every 2 to 3 years and, all too often, institutional knowledge walks out the door with personnel. Simply put, an in-house environmental system cannot be people dependent. The immediate savings provided by a home-grown or standalone database run by select employees are eliminated when you consider the potential for errors, and unnecessary reliance on a few individuals who control the data and are familiar with its operation.
When you weigh all the facts, it becomes clear that the immediate savings afforded by manual-entry databases are offset by a myriad of potential issues: lost data, manual data entry errors, personnel turnover and more. A preserved and well-maintained level of documentation supporting proof of compliance is the expectation of all organizations facing environmental regulations—and an enterprise-wide system with access available across the board is the only logical way to achieve that goal. If data preservation is king, spreadsheets are for the pawns.
Read the white paper, here.
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