A new whitepaper from Crown Information Management reveals that Redundant, Obsolete, and Trivial (ROT) information is silently draining corporate budgets, with up to 50% of enterprise data sitting unused. This hidden burden drives up storage, backup, and compliance costs – yet most businesses remain unaware of its financial impact.
The report, titled From ROT to ROI: How Sustainable Information Management Saves Money, outlines how eliminating ROT can deliver immediate ROI, with savings often appearing within the first year.
In one case study, a regional construction firm reduced its cloud footprint by 110TB and destroyed 6,700 boxes of paper records, cutting costs and improving discovery times.
The whitepaper estimates that deleting 100TB of cloud data could save $27,600 annually, before factoring in backup and replication costs. ROT also impacts productivity: 62% of employees say they spend too much time searching for information, often due to outdated or duplicated content.
Beyond financial savings, ROT clean-up supports sustainability goals. By reducing data centre demand, paper waste, and e-waste, businesses can lower their environmental impact while improving compliance with regulations like GDPR and standards such as ISO 21964 and NIST SP 800-88.
Tim Rushent, Director of Digital EMEA, Crown Information Management, said: “Most companies I consult with are paying to store and protect information they do not need. ROT hides in everything from boxes to collaboration platforms. By removing it, organisations not only save money – they reduce risk, improve productivity, and shrink their carbon footprint.”
Crown Information Management’s six-step program – inventory, policy alignment, digitalisation, secure destruction, right-sizing, and ongoing control – offers a practical roadmap for organisations ready to tackle ROT and unlock value from their data.
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