A working tool for your team

Before the first
buyer conversation.

Six questions to organize your thinking. This is a preparation tool, not a valuation or a legal clearance.

Six answers make a useful first conversation

Build the outline from information your team already holds.

Describe the records

Inventory: Types, systems, dates and volume.
Context: How records connect to real work.

Identify the decision-makers

Authority: Who can approve a licensing discussion?
Rights: What belongs to you, and what needs review?

Set the boundaries

Scope: What could be included or excluded?
Approval: Who signs off before anything is shared?

Mark the statements you can supportA decision-maker is involvedAn owner or authorized representative can approve an initial discussion and identify the other reviewers.The records can be describedYou can name a workflow, its record categories and the systems where it lives, without sharing the records.Rights and exclusions have been mappedCustomer terms, third-party content, personal information and other restrictions have an identified reviewer.The context is understandableSomeone can explain fields, units, dates, relationships, missing periods and changes in process.A narrow first scope is possibleYou can separate a potential evaluation scope from material that must remain excluded.There is a review pathLegal, security and business reviewers can assess a named buyer and a specific proposed use before transfer.

Your result is anonymous. Selections stay in this page’s memory unless you separately choose to send an enquiry below.

Prepare the description, keep the records

Start with systems your team recognizes: quality-management software, maintenance logs, ERP work orders, a document archive or a controlled spreadsheet. Complete one row per record family in your own notes. No export is needed.

A metadata-only inventory worksheet
Field	What to note privately
System and record family	For example, maintenance system / completed interventions. No login or connection details.
Approximate volume and unit	Estimate work orders, inspections or documents. State which unit you counted.
Date range and language	Broad start/end years, missing periods and the languages used.
Responsible owner	The internal role that can explain the records and organize review.
Known exclusions	Categories needing exclusion or review, such as client-owned drawings or personal information.

Write a category-level summary of the data, broad time coverage, approximate volume and export formats. Avoid customer names, employee details, proprietary designs or the contents of actual records. You do not need to prepare a sample to use this checklist.

Company age is not the same as usable history

A long-established company may have only a short accessible record. Note when each system began, when migrations happened and the earliest archive that can still be opened. Years in business alone do not show what is available.

Check whether old attachments, drawing revisions and discussion history remain accessible after a migration.
Identify whether case, job or project references connect records across systems; note changed identifier schemes.
Mark missing periods caused by retention settings, deleted accounts or incomplete archives.
Separate verified coverage from estimates. Do not fill gaps with invented history or collect new employee recordings for this purpose.

A worked inventory example

Consider a company founded in 2001. Its current project system began in 2019; an older document archive covers 2012–2018, but some 2016 attachments are missing. Calling that “25 years of data” would hide the actual coverage. Record the systems separately.

Collection	Coverage to describe	Open question
Current project system	2019 onward; projects, comments and status histories	Does export preserve attachments and revision history?
Older document archive	2012–2018; readable files with incomplete 2016 attachments	Which project references still connect to final outcomes?
Earlier operations	Company existed, but usable records have not been established	Does a readable, permissioned archive exist at all?

The point is not to make the collection look larger. It is to give the next reviewer an accurate starting point. Mark each answer as verified, estimated or unknown; note who can resolve an unknown. Do not merge incompatible counts such as documents and database events into one impressive total.

Prepare a short internal handoff

One record family and the business process it describes.
The system owner and authorized decision-maker.
Readable dates, formats and volume with an explicit unit.
The identifiers that connect records and a note about known gaps.
The exclusions and permissions that still need review.
The next question you want a prospective buyer to answer.

Use this outline for the internal handoff, then summarize the relevant record families in your enquiry.

Some answers need another person

“We have the files” does not answer “we can license them.” Ask your internal reviewers to map customer obligations, third-party rights and the proposed uses. If the scope involves sensitive or regulated material, get qualified advice before taking it further.

For the next step, read the owner’s resource or compare public buyer programs.