The amount of data being captured and held within businesses of all types and sizes globally is growing at unprecedented rates, with analysts suggesting data growth in companies now easily exceeds 30% per month.

The additional complexity means even small law firms now use many types of systems to capture and store their information, including email; Sharepoint; Google docs; iManage and many others.

As data volumes grow, many of these systems require users to spend time tagging information so as to make it easier to find it later... and of course, what’s the point of collecting all this information anyway, if it can’t readily be found when required, to run the business, service the customers, and manage legislative compliance?

Just to add to the headache of all this data management, there are legislated requirements, such as under GDPR, to ensure that personal Identifiable Information is being managed correctly and in accordance with the purpose for which it was collected.

Once that purpose has lapsed, such as when employees’ or customers’ relationship with a company ends, then the data must be purged. The penalties for not complying with this legislation can be scarily high, but apart from the financial impact of a very large fine, there is the additional risk of reputational damage if the firm is seen to not be managing and purging data appropriately.

SimSage is a company that specialises in helping organisations of all types and sizes globally with managing these issues, with rapidly increasing engagement at present with the legal, insurance, health and finance sectors

Registered in Cornwall, UK, and with teams spread across the UK and New Zealand, SimSage’s innovative and intelligent software helps with quickly finding relevant, contextual information from any and all of a company’s various information systems from a single ‘Search’ box. 

With a range of selectable filters, searches can be directed to a particular system, or multiple systems; a specific file-type, or multiple file-types, and; by date range, author, and many other options. SimSage reads every word in every document (full-text search) and it does this in the context of the sentence and paragraph, therefore understanding that when, for instance, the word ‘instrument’ is searched for, whether the text found relates to a musical instrument, a scientific instrument, or a legal/financial instrument, hugely reducing the ‘false positive’, erroneous results that frustrate people every day.

The time and cost savings delivered by the SimSage technology assist significantly with team productivity and customer service, while at the same time reducing the risks of not finding the right information when required. The SimSage team has a large compendium of stories from companies who have spent hundreds of thousands of pounds just to find information needed to avoid litigation and penalties, when the SimSage technology could have provided that information instantly.

In addition to simply finding information, SimSage provides customers with a range of detailed information about their data, including age of documents and files, the number of duplicate documents, and where Personal Identifiable Information exists that may pose a risk to non-compliance with GDPR and other privacy legislation.

Sean Wilson is co-founder and managing director of SimSage

For further information, visit simsage.ai or email [email protected]