The VaultStreet Web Log

Are you contributing to the digital landfill?

The folks over at AIIM–the community that provides education, research, and best practices to help organizations find, control, and optimize their information–put out a very popular slideshow last month that, according to a recent news release, “reflects the enormous and usually unaddressed challenges facing organizations in the management of electronic information.”

Some of the bigger points the slide deck made:

• Over 40% of organizations have no policy for classifying electronic information as business records.


• Nearly 64% of end users believe that their organization understands what PAPER records are and how they should be retained - but only 34% have the same understanding when considering ELECTRONIC records.


• Only 41% of organizations deliver any sort of training on how to handle electronic information.


• 52% of organizations have “little or no confidence” that their electronic information is “accurate, accessible, and trustworthy.”

To help organizations find and learn from others with similar problems, AIIM launched an executive networking site called InformationZen.

Summer’s in full swing, but the blog posts keep coming. Here are this week’s favorites!

1. Aaron Kessler of the HeraldTribune.com discusses Coldwell Banker Residential Real Estate’s new branch at Lakewood Ranch–one of two experimental “offices of the future” that Coldwell Banker has in the United States. One of the goals is to be completely paperless and have all documents online and on the computers. Is this the future for more offices?

2. Karen “KJ” Janowski from CleanTech WebLog discusses how a law firm went green. The law firm used about half-ton of paper a year per attorney. That’s lot of paper!

3. Jim from Blueprint for Financial Prosperity talks with Dr. Bonnie Eaker Weil (author of the provocatively-titled book “Financial Infidelity“) about how couples can get into and stay out of financial trouble.

We’re back after a short summer break with some more links for you.

1. Dumb Little Man Blog features how to rejuvenate your messy home office in 10 easy steps.

2. The Hawaii Tribune-Herald discusses how to go paperless in paradise. Hawaii’s Department of Taxation is going paperless and having citizens file online. The state will still save between $500,000 and $1 million every year even with some citizens requesting the tax booklets.

3. Home offices and governments aren’t the only ones going paperless: nine out of ten accountants prefer a paperless office, according to the U.K.’s AccountingWeb. The biggest reasons, by the way? To have a secure electronic backup of the data, as well as easier access to client files.

4. Finally, Grant Skinner discusses the facts and fiction surrounding the paperless office.

We’re happy to report that Shelly Crawford, a veteran credit union technology specialist, has joined our team. She comes to VaultStreet with 17 years of experience in new business development, partner development and account management in credit union, technology and services. Using her extensive experience in partner development, Crawford will focus on expanding VaultStreet’s partnerships with credit unions.

Prior to joining VaultStreet, Crawford served as an account manager at FISERV, a provider of technology solutions to credit unions, and the California Credit Union League. She has also worked with small, financial services technology providers including Passageways, a portal software developer specializing in Corporate portals for credit unions, and SilverCloud Software, a developer of knowledge management systems.

VaultStreet can provide credit union members with the ability to consolidate and automate the collection, authentication, organization and storage of paperless, electronic financial records from a variety of sources. VaultStreet makes it simple, safe and secure for credit unions to provide their members with a compelling tool to switch to paperless statements while maintaining financial documents in a highly-available, authenticated and secure online repository.

Companies interested in partnering with VaultStreet should contact Shelly Crawford at scrawford@vaultstreet.com or Paul Hutchins, vice president of business development, at phutchins@vaultstreet.com.

Consumers interested in a free 30-day trial subscription to VaultStreet should visit www.vaultstreet.com.

1. In MarketWatch’s June 23rd article by Gail Liberman and Alan Lavine, banks going “green” are examined. There are many examples of how the bigger banks are going green and the positives of being more eco-friendly.

2. Did you know that 687,000 tons of paper could be saved each year if every U.S. household stopped receiving paper bills and statements? EnvironmentalLeader.com examines the results of a Javelin Strategy & Research report.

3. Christopher Hosford writes about the Atlanta Green Meetings Council and their movement to go paperless at meetings. The council has saved more than $17,000 in annual printing costs.

4. Dumb Little Man Blog explores how to rejuvenate your messy home office.

VaultStreet now has a Facebook page! If you’re a fan of VaultStreet, tell us (and tell others)!

It was a slower week for blog posts on things we care about. Perhaps Summer’s arrival is distracting folks? Here’s this week’s list:

1. “The Super Easy Approach to Decluttering your Home” by the Dumb Little Man Blog discusses how to start to get rid of all of your clutter. The advice even talks about how much time and energy is spent on cleaning out bills or going over old financial documents.

2. Susan Sabo of Productivity Cafe Blog writes her fourth installment about productivity and the grave. The fourth part of this morbid series discusses what to save for records and documents for your loved ones to have once you have passed on.

3. This is an oldie but a goodie. Tim Ferriss has some great thoughts on going paperless this time last year.

See you next week!

KillerStartup.com is a website that looks for the next big Internet wonder, and Vaultstreet is on their radar! The blog highlighted our “clean, user-friendly interface with easy access to financial institutions”, described the benefits of being paperless, and called out our “state of the art back up technology and security.”

We’d like to thank KillerStartup for the excellent mention and encourage all to vote for us in their survey.

Make sure you vote–click the + sign!

1. Janet Kornblum of USA TODAY writes an article about the growth and convenience of online medical records.

2. Susan Sabo of Productivity Cafe Blog writes the fourth installment today about productivity and the grave, discussing what to save of records and documents for your loved ones who have passed on.

3. Marlo Nikkila of DotComPreneur.com discusses how to become more organized with all of your paper files using her theory P.E.A.C.E. Guess what? One of the E’s means “electronically.”

4. Time Magazine, inspired by the “100 Thing Challenge,” urged its readers to at least consider whittling “down their possessions to a mere 100 items.” It sounds a bit scary, but it’s an interesting intellectual exercise at the very least. As we mentioned just recently , we’re big fans of cutting down on stuff!

See you next week!

The article, nay, the entire site, appears to be a little wonky this morning, but Rafe Needleman of CNET’s Webware.com wrote about VaultStreet this week, calling us “a clever new company that you’ll instantly get if you’re sick of dealing with paper financial records from your bank, brokerage,” etc.  Incidentally, we’re looking at a number of pricing models to keep the costs down for consumers, including partnering with more institutions and financial services providers.