The Growing Storage Challenge for Financial Organizations
Financial institutions face a unique storage predicament in Microsoft 365. The banking and financial services sector generates and maintains enormous volumes of data—from transaction records and customer statements to compliance documentation and regulatory reports. This critical information must be retained for extended periods to meet regulatory requirements while remaining accessible for audits and operational needs.
The result? Financial firms typically experience Microsoft 365 storage growth rates higher than other industries, creating significant budget pressure as storage costs escalate year after year. What begins as a straightforward operational expense can quickly transform into a major cost center.
Understanding Storage Bloat in Financial Environments
Storage bloat in financial organizations typically stems from several industry-specific factors:
Regulatory Retention Requirements
Financial institutions operate under strict regulatory frameworks that mandate extended retention periods—often 7-10 years for most documents and permanently for others. This creates an ever-expanding storage footprint that requires document management as new documents are continuously added while few are eligible for deletion.
Duplicate Document Proliferation
The financial workflow naturally creates document duplication. A single loan application might exist in multiple locations: the original submission folder, the underwriting team’s workspace, the compliance review site, and various departmental archives. Each copy consumes valuable storage resources.
Versioning Overload
Financial documents frequently undergo multiple revisions during review and approval processes. Without proper version management, these documents can accumulate dozens of historical versions that remain stored indefinitely, often consuming more space than the final document itself.
Orphaned User Content
When staff members leave the organization, their OneDrive content and personal document libraries often remain intact, consuming storage without providing ongoing business value. This orphaned user problem is particularly acute in financial services, where employee turnover can be significant.
Audit by ProvisionPoint’s Solution to Storage Optimization
Audit by ProvisionPoint delivers the visibility and best practices needed to systematically address these storage challenges. As a native Microsoft Teams application, it allows financial institutions to understand their Microsoft 365 storage landscape directly within their daily workflow environment.
Comprehensive Storage Visibility
The first step in controlling costs is understanding exactly where your storage is being used. Audit provides detailed reports on storage consumption across your Microsoft 365 environment, allowing you to:
- Identify the SharePoint sites consuming the most storage
- Pinpoint orphaned users with excessive OneDrive utilization
- Discover Teams with disproportionate storage consumption
- Track storage growth trends over time
This visibility enables targeted optimization efforts rather than broad, disruptive initiatives that might impact business operations.
Conclusion
For financial institutions, Microsoft 365 storage optimization isn’t merely about cost reduction—it’s about creating a more efficient and manageable digital environment while maintaining compliance with regulatory requirements. Audit provides the visibility and management capabilities needed to achieve these dual objectives.
By implementing a systematic approach to storage management, financial organizations can significantly reduce Microsoft 365 costs while simultaneously improving information governance. These improvements translate directly to the bottom line, enabling technology investments in areas that more directly support customer service and business growth.
In today’s challenging economic environment, where every dollar counts, the ability to optimize Microsoft 365 storage represents a rare opportunity to reduce costs without sacrificing operational capabilities—a true win-win for financial institutions of all sizes.
