e-Discovery and e-mail archiving - Reduces financial risk, dramatically improves e-mail performance and lowers storage costs

In recent years the finance and insurance industry has experienced tighter regulatory controls - notably SOX legislation (Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002). All transactions are now governed by stringent rules, and subject to checks and balances to ensure authenticity and legal compliance. E-mail communications are now deemed to be bona fide legal documents, and as such companies are obliged to retain them for a period of seven years.

Toyota Financial Services realised that they must be able to search and retrieve this information in a timely manner as part of any audit trail or legal discovery motion or face possible legal consequences, so they contacted Neocol whose expert guidance and best practices were ideally suited to complete a project of this complexity.

Business Challenge

Toyota Financial Services had three major business challenges that needed addressing:

• The had to ensure that all systems were SOX compliant and that they met FSA regulations
• They needed to dramatically reduce rapidly increasing storage costs
• They had to easily find e-mails to support litigation cases

The Solution

Neocol and IBM were able to demonstrate to Toyota Financial Services that IBM's eDiscovery and e-mail archiving solution was a strategic response that could meet their current compliance and operational requirements. The deployment consisted of three key products:

• IBM Content Manager manages all e-mail content across multiple platforms and databases
• IBM Content Collector provides e-mail archiving and retrieval, and manages e-mail server growth
• IBM eDiscovery Manager provides search, legal hold and export of case-relevant archived e-mail

Implementation

Toyota Financial Services conducted and shared a stringent evaluation process whereby they reviewed the short and long term business requirements and capabilities.

Neocol then worked with key personnel at Toyota Financial Services to implement the system which would meet all of the business requirements that were driving the project - Most importantly SOX and FSA compliance.

Neocol used their experience with many other similar deployments and showed the Toyota team how other leading organisations met and complied with such stringent regulation.

The Business Benefits

Neocol delivered to Toyota Financial Services an integrated IBM e-mail storage and retrieval system that addressed their legal compliance needs:

• Daily archiving of e-mails and attachments
• Live e-mail storage reduced by 50%
• Over 1.3 million e-mails archived
• eDiscovery ready with all e-mails indexed for rapid search and retrieval capabilities
• Deep compression and storage functionality dramatically reduces storage space
• Export .NSF files for further analysis, legal review and forensics

About Toyota Financial Services

Toyota Financial Services is a leading provider of automotive financial services, offering an extensive line of financing plans to Toyota customers and dealers throughout the world. The Toyota Financial Services worldwide brand identity was launched in December 1999 and acts as an umbrella brand name used to market the products of Toyota Motor Credit Corporation and Toyota Motor Insurance Services Inc. Toyota Financial Services (UK) plc is the captive automotive finance house for Toyota and Lexus in the UK.

Visit the Toyota Financial Services website