Use case
Regional records in one system the country offices can run
A records management system that gives country offices a shared way to register, find, and retain files without a regional shared-drive maze.
- Client
- A multi-national organization
- Sector
- Multi-national organizations
- Services
- Digitization, Custom Applications
At a glance
The pain point
Country offices kept parallel folder trees with no shared registration.
Regional retrieval meant asking each office for its copy.
Retention policy existed on paper while practice stayed local and informal.
What we delivered
A records management system with shared registration, search, role-based access, and retention paths country offices can operate.
The outputs
Offices register into one system. Regional retrieval no longer starts with a chase across drives. Retention has a place to land.
The overview
A multi-national organization needed regional records without forcing every country office into a single shared-drive maze. Each office had evolved its own folder trees and naming habits. Regional retrieval meant asking each country for its copy. Retention policy existed centrally while practice stayed local.
This engagement delivered a records management system that gives country offices a shared way to register, find, and retain files—respecting local naming where it matters, and giving the region one place to search.
The pain point
Country offices kept parallel folder trees with no shared registration. The same programme produced different structures in different places. Regional staff spent days collecting “the file” that already existed in five variants.
Regional retrieval meant asking each office for its copy. Latency and incompleteness were built into the operating model. Decisions waited on attachments.
Retention policy existed on paper while practice stayed local and informal. Headquarters could publish schedules; it could not see whether offices had anywhere to execute them.
Our approach
We ran this engagement through Betahood’s methodology: Kick-off, Discover, Build, and Deliver.
Kick-off
Kick-off brought regional information leads and country offices together. The problem: parallel folder trees, regional retrieval by chase, retention on paper. Constraints included local naming habits that adoption depends on. Success meant shared registration with a region that can search. Discover followed the brief.
Discover
We interviewed multiple country offices before standardising. Workshops negotiated shared registration fields that still respect local naming. Real collections from more than one country tested findability. The written specification staged rollout around proven regional retrieval wins. Build started only when that picture was shared.
Build
Build configured the shared records system, access model, and priority migrations. Checkpoints with country users rejected structures that felt like a headquarters template nobody would open. Search and retention paths were refined against real requests.
Deliver
Staged go-live proved retrieval for a regional use case, then expanded. Local enablement and written handover covered country and regional support. Support stayed close through early registration habits. Offices kept familiarity; the region gained a coherent corpus.
What we delivered
- Shared registration
- Cross-office search
- Role-based access
- Retention paths
We delivered a records management system with shared registration, search, role-based access, and retention paths country offices can operate. Local naming can live inside a shared frame. Regional search no longer depends on personal networks.
The delivery covered architecture, configuration, priority migrations, access model, and handover for regional and country support roles.
The outputs
Offices register into one system. Regional retrieval no longer starts with a chase across drives. Retention has a place to land. Country teams keep enough familiarity to use the system daily; the region finally gets a coherent corpus.
The organization improved information control without pretending every office was identical. That balance is what made the system durable.
Client review
The people who run the process day to day were clear about what changed—and why the approach mattered as much as the software.
They interviewed country offices before they standardized anything. The structure respects local naming while giving us one place to search. That approach is why adoption stuck—Betahood helped us keep the operation, not replace it with a template nobody would open.