Smart Shredding: How Group Purchasing Organizations Can Keep the Jewels, Discard the ROT, and Slash Their Scanning Costs

Boxes of old files aren’t just dusty—they’re dangerous.

For Group Purchasing Organizations (GPOs), physical record storage has become an invisible cost center, draining budgets, exposing members to risk, and undermining digital transformation goals. Yet too often, organizations fall into the trap of scanning everything, assuming digitization alone is the solution.

It isn’t.

In reality, what’s missing is Information Governance by Design—a proactive approach that aligns scanning decisions with retention rules, security standards, and operational needs before any records are digitized. For GPOs and their members, this approach doesn’t just reduce scanning costs—it eliminates them where possible.

ROT in the Box: What Are You Really Paying to Keep?

Industry surveys show that up to 69% of organizational data is ROT—Redundant, Obsolete, or Trivial. Think expired contracts, printed invitations to company events, outdated studies and internal reports, or unneeded backup documentation. If those are sitting in your off-site boxes, scanning them only makes the problem digital.

Even worse? You’re paying to store them, retrieve them, scan them, and keep them secure.

With off-site storage fees rising and major vendors introducing steep withdrawal penalties, the financial math no longer works in favor of inaction.

GPOs that proactively assess what’s actually in their stored boxes can avoid these costs entirely—and help members do the same.

IG by Design: Preventing the Problem, Not Just Digitizing It

At its core, IG by Design means building governance into the process from the start. Before scanning begins, it asks key questions:

• Do these records have a legal retention requirement?

• Are they duplicates, drafts, or outdated?

• Do they contain sensitive data that could trigger risk if breached?

• Can they be defensibly destroyed, now?

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This approach is modeled on successful frameworks like Privacy by Design. Instead of cleaning up later, GPOs integrate governance principles—retention, privacy, security, and lifecycle control—into the front end of scanning and digitization projects.

The payoff? Fewer records to scan, store, and manage—and a clearer compliance story to tell.

Smart Shredding: The IG-First Way to Digitize

Enter “Smart Shredding.” Organizations that tale a “smart shredding” approach perform a proactive retention-aligned evaluation first, identifying ROT and certifying the destruction process.

Here’s what that means in practice:

• Lower scanning volume. Why digitize 1,000 boxes if only 450 contain records that still matter?

  
  

• Legally defensible deletion. Destruction is documented, policy-based, and audit-ready.

  
  

• Better metadata and classification. What’s scanned is actually findable and usable.

Typical Metrics: Organizations applying information governance best practices can expect to eliminate 40–60% of physical records as redundant, obsolete, or trivial (ROT) before scanning begins. Given that the average review and digitization cost exceeds $130 per box, this can translate to savings of $52,000–$78,000 per 1,000 boxes—before accounting for downstream savings in storage, retrieval, and compliance risk.

Why GPOs Should Care

GPOs already negotiate for better pricing on medical supplies, IT infrastructure, and administrative services. But few extend that negotiating power to records management—even though this is where members quietly hemorrhage money.

By making IG by Design part of their core offering, GPOs can:

• Help members avoid predatory storage vendor practices.

• Drive down scanning and digitization costs with ROT elimination.

• Enhance data security and privacy compliance across the membership base.

• Support AI readiness by ensuring that digital records are clean, current, and context-rich.

And for GPOs themselves, leading by example strengthens their negotiating position and enhances member trust.

The Role of IG Professionals: Translators, Strategists, Enforcers

This isn’t just a task for IT or compliance. IG professionals serve as translators between legal mandates, business needs, and technology capabilities.

Their role includes:

• Conducting needs assessments to evaluate the real value (or liability) of stored content.

• Leading data hygiene efforts that prioritize defensible disposition.

• Coordinating across departments—legal, privacy, operations—to ensure alignment.

• Building cross-functional governance programs that extend to vendors and contractors.

• Training staff and vendors on lifecycle responsibilities, from capture to deletion.

  
  

With their help, ROT doesn’t just get moved—it gets removed.

A Shift from Storage to Stewardship

The real message for GPOs?

Physical record storage isn’t passive anymore. It’s a strategic liability or a strategic opportunity—depending on how it’s handled.

Scanning everything without evaluating content wastes money, increases risk, and undermines compliance. But when IG by Design leads the process, digitization becomes smarter, cheaper, and safer.

In a time when search inefficiencies can cost a 1,000-person company $25 million annually, and breach risks are surging, GPOs can no longer afford to ignore their hidden records burden.

Final Thought: Start Before the Scanner Turns On

The cost of ROT is measured in more than just dollars—it’s measured in time, risk, and missed opportunity. By embracing Information Governance by Design and partnering with skilled solution providers, GPOs can offer their members more than access to volume discounts.

They can offer access to a cleaner, safer, and more strategic future.

And it starts by deciding what not to scan.