Whether you've decided that it's time to get your business documentation up-to-date and ready for due diligence, or you've just heard that building a corporate repository is a new best practice, it begs to ask: What is a corporate repository? And how is that different than the filing cabinet most businesses have been using for years?
Let's start first by exploring what a repository is. According to Merriam-Webster, a repository is defined as:
A place where a large amount of something is stored; a person who possesses a lot of information, wisdom, etc.
In the case of a corporate repository, the term extends to a corporation's documents. A corporate repository is a place where a large amount of a corporation's information is stored, typically for the long term. Corporate repositories are not made public. Only users with specific roles and permissions granted may access documents in a typical corporate repository.
Think of a corporate repository as a virtual version of a CFO's filing cabinet. This repository replaces that cabinet and contains all critical company documentation. Modern corporate repositories are hosted in the cloud on a virtual data room, where they are accessible as needed, but only by authorized users, as well as routinely backed up. Should a water main break and flood the CFO's office, you can rest easy knowing that all of your corporate documents are safely stored in the cloud.
Corporate repositories also have the added benefit of being neatly organized, indexed, and searchable. This translates into less prep work should you go through a financial audit or enter into due diligence for fundraising or M&A.
In addition to restricting access to authorized users, corporate repositories generate detailed audit logs. This allows you to see exactly who accessed what and when. This information can be useful to gauge investor interest as well as for compliance or for legal purposes should a dispute or IP infringement occur.
Now that you know what a corporate repository is, start your search for the right virtual data room to store it on at SecureDocs.
