Seal the Data Archival Deal—How to Pitch Your Archival Project Like a Shark Tank Pro

by | Apr 23, 2025 | Blog

When you’re pitching a winning strategy to the boardroom—like modernizing your data archival strategy—it can feel like you’re facing a bunch of sharks. Even when the strategic imperative is crystal clear, before your very eyes, your CEO suddenly transforms into Barbara Corcoran. Your Chief Strategy Officer becomes Mark Cuban, and out of the corner of your eye, your CFO suddenly looks a whole lot like Mr. Wonderful.

You know they’re just waiting to reject your proposal. But you have the floor for five minutes. Five minutes to convey your project’s strategic value, organization-wide impact, and ROI, so that the Shark Tank—ahem, your Board—never has to drop those five killer words: “For this reason, I’m out.”

In the sections below, we’ll outline a winning strategy that will have everyone invested in your data archival modernization project.

Step 1 | Clearly articulate the problem

While you know that modernizing your data archival strategy is a no-brainer, the rest of your team might need a bit more convincing. To begin, start with the pain points. Any of them. Chances are, data archival will be a solution—or a critical starting point to a solution—for all of them.

After all, what other technology can help protect your organization from lawsuits, audits, and cyber attacks, while simultaneously getting you off of old, risky platforms? What other tool can help support organization-wide strategic initiatives? Or prepare your system for future M&A activities, emerging technologies, and growing patient expectations?

Still, it can be hard for everyone to inherently understand your vision. Begin by laying the groundwork: Our data is our greatest asset. Then, continue with a warning, the glaring risk you must share: If not properly managed, our data is also our fastest-growing liability. Lastly, make sure the Shark Suite understands the scope: This is not just IT’s problem—it is everyone’s problem. Modernizing your system’s archival strategy is not just an IT project; it’s a business imperative with the potential to improve care delivery, provider workloads, patient satisfaction, cybersecurity, and more.

Setting a Foundation for Your Pitch: The 1-2-3 of Why Archival, Why Now

  1. Our data is our greatest asset, with the potential to transform our organization and set it apart for decades to come
  2. If not managed properly, it is our biggest liability, and can cost hundreds of thousands—if not millions—due to bloated, outdated systems and compliance fines, audit fees, and unnecessary lawsuits.
  3. Data governance touches every team, not just IT. Modernizing our data archival strategy is a problem we must address today, before our risk grows.

Step 2 | Weave in the numbers

In today’s complex landscape, hospitals and health systems are facing severe financial pressure. Within this context, even the most worthy projects may be sidelined if they are not deemed a financial priority. Because of this, every Shark must be able to think like a CFO. Behind every project’s “yes” or “no” are questions around the hard numbers: Where can we cut costs? What do we stand to gain financially? And, is this project truly feasible within our annual budget?

Any winning pitch will be able to address those three key questions—and provide an introduction to the significant cost savings every organization stands to unlock from a thoughtful data archival modernization project. Here are some helpful tips to dive in:

A) Cutting costs: Know where you are paying a premium to store dead data or retain outdated, legacy systems.

Every year—just to meet patient data retention requirements—your organization is spending money to maintain legacy systems, unused data warehouses, and expensive storage environments. That means you are overpaying to maintain data that is rarely accessed, or even at risk of exposure. Modernizing your archival approach will allow you to finally sunset these applications and systems, shrink its footprint, streamline data sharing and interoperability across locations, and consolidate within a single, lower-cost environment.

→ Risk is costly, too: Older and outdated systems increase your risk of data breaches, which are incredibly costly. Not only will modernizing your data strategy reduce spend, it will also reduce costs related to regulatory and legal exposure. On average, every healthcare breach costs organizations nearly $11 million. HIPAA leaks run up to $1.5 million per violation.

The bottom line: Modern archival projects will help with immediate cost containment.

B) Financial gains: Help leadership understand where data will drive very real operational and financial gains.

Outdated systems are not only costly to maintain—they are also resource intensive. Legacy systems require additional staff to oversee complicated, time-consuming, and manual workflows. They often require manual data entry and retrieval, and result in duplicative work. Staff spend a lot of time searching systems for relevant information, sifting through files for audit and record requests, and may even wind up conducting redundant patient testing.

Outdated data archival strategies also keep organizations stuck in the past. WIthout the ability to leverage data for new use cases, organizations cannot keep up with the market and other strategic imperatives—including AI-powered applications, clinical decision making and insights, and hyper-personalized patient communications and care plans. Modern data archival management is the foundation for strategic potential that powers an organization’s long-term financial health.

The bottom line: Modern data archival strategies create long-term strategic value by unlocking administrative efficiencies and enabling future interoperability, AI-driven workflows, and M&A readiness.

C) Budgeting: Best-in-class data archival management is not cheap—but it will save you money, time, and many headaches in the long run.

At a time when savings is a strategy, budgeting for the right data archival partner is paramount. It’s critical to ensure your entire leadership team understands that this is a case of spending money to save it. The savings from decommissioning costly legacy applications, storage tools, and systems will more than compensate for the project’s costs, as well as make possible a new set of revenue-driving strategic projects and initiatives. However, it all begins with budgeting properly, today.

→ Picking the wrong partner can be costly, too: Inexperienced vendors can make projects sound simple from the get-go, but often result in missed timelines, incomplete data extracts, or an inability to transfer corrupt or “locked” data. Image only archives can limit your ability to leverage this data in the future and end up costing more in the long run.

These challenges reset a project’s stopwatch and often require scrapping archival entirely and beginning anew. Missing timelines and requesting new data extracts are very expensive mistakes that often require organizations to extend or renew contracts, resulting in hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars, in additional fees.

The bottom line: Modern data archival projects may be costly upfront, but in the long run, they unlock significant savings and empower future revenue growth opportunities.

Step 3 | Hit on the strategic imperatives

More and more healthcare institutions are realizing that their data is one of their most powerful assets—even though they may not necessarily know what they need it for today. Come to the table prepared to outline some of these use cases—and why waiting until it’s too late is no longer an option.

Why leading organizations want to modernize their data archival systems:

“What we’re seeing now is that [health systems want] to use that data in a more strategic way and apply it across other areas of the business to unlock new benefits for patients, providers, and administrators alike.”

Dave Lamar

Chief Growth Officer, MediQuant

Make sure your C-Suite understands: Modern data archival strategies are foundational to every future strategic imperative, from AI and analytics to patient acquisition and engagement and M&A readiness within the rapidly consolidating care landscape.

Step 4 | Be prepared to quell objections

At this stage of your pitch, you’ve covered much ground and you’re likely seeing a row of nodding faces before you.

But, at this interval, you’re also likely to be hit with most of the objections. After all, data archival, when done correctly, is a massive undertaking, requiring strategic oversight as well as staffing resources and budget planning.

Review our handy chart below to prepare for—and handily counter—every top data archival project objection.

Data is an asset | Clean data powers an unlimited number of strategic use cases:

  • Responsible data warehousing
  • Population health reporting
  • Clinical data applications
  • Patient-driven data vaults
  • Custom-built, enterprise AI-powered tools
  • Streamlined claims data and prior auth
  • Hyper-personalized patient communications
  • Integrated social determinants of health
  • Research & innovation projects
  • M&A restructuring

Modernized data archival is a no-brainer—but sometimes, your team may need some additional convincing. Here are the most common objections, and how to overcome them each and every time.

Objection Why Impact Overcome
1. Archival is invisible Archival doesn’t actively generate revenue or “wow” patients. Backburner archival: “Let’s focus on our key strategic goals, instead.” While archival is certainly “behind the scenes,” its impacts touch every aspect of our business: revenue, patient access, provider quality of care, and future discrete data use cases that can set us apart.
2. Archival is technically messy We have multiple legacy systems, bad data quality, a lack of data governance standards, and systems inherited from multiple rounds of M&A. Archival projects are passed over, seen as too costly, time-consuming, and likely to subsume too many resources. With the right partner, and the proper teams and resources allocated internally, data archival can be thoughtfully managed from start to finish.
3. Archival has no clear sense of ownership Who oversees data governance? Is it IT? HIM? Finance? Legal? Data archival projects can fall between the cracks, making it difficult for teams to feel ownership—or strong motivation. The most successful projects are sponsored by seasoned IT professionals with a strong sense of strategy and systems—and supported by C-Suite stakeholders and a governance committee.
4. Archival’s benefits are so proactive, but we are stuck playing catch-up We have so much to do and so few resources. We have to prioritize what’s broken today—not what might break tomorrow. Archival only happens when it’s too late—after a crisis—or in haste after an acquisition or critical technology switch. It can be costly to wait too long to enact best-in-class data governance. Mismanaged data can result in exorbitant fees—paying hundreds of thousands or even millions to maintain legacy applications—and  unforeseen lawsuits, audits, or compliance fines. 
5. Fear of data loss We have so much data, and there is so much legal and regulatory oversight. What happens if we archive it incorrectly and lose it forever? When systems are messy, kept “in the dark,” or data is locked after a breach, retrieval can feel impossible. In these cases, over-retention and hoarding protracts the issue. Partnering with a vendor with decades of expertise can help alleviate any concerns. The best vendors will have deep experience managing complex, large, and sophisticated data sets from a gamut of applications and systems.

Step 5 | Be a closer

You’re about to wrap things up. Ideally, you’re seeing nods and experiencing a shared sense of understanding from around the boardroom table. It’s time to put a bow on things, and earn that organizational buy-in.

Remember, from start to finish, the driving force behind your pitch is imparting a feeling of awe about your data. It’s like a mantra that bears repeating: Your data is powerful. Your data is potential. Your data must be managed properly.

Now that everyone shares this vision and understanding, reinforce a simple truth: Status quo is no longer a viable option. Keeping your data in the dark, limiting it across disparate, disjointed legacy systems and applications, and risking its exposure to breach is not a feasible strategy. Inaction has a price—your organization should not have to pay it.

Lastly, keep in mind: Whether it’s compliance, cost savings, or future strategic application, data archival modernization holds a personal appeal for every stakeholder in the room. Help outline what everyone stands to gain and a realistic budget and timeline. After buy-in, enact your vision

The best Sharks begin their pitch knowing its inevitable outcome: investment from across the board. That’s why we recommend you come to the table prepared with a sense of the vendor(s) you’d like to partner with.

When evaluating a partner for your data archiving modernization project, keep experience top-of-mind. Data extracts are not for the faint of heart. The best partners will be able to support you from start to finish, every step of the way, because they’ll have seen it all before.

Ideally, they’ll be highly experienced at handling the most sophisticated, complex data sets, and will have already navigated every roadblock and challenge—so that you don’t have to. Make sure you select a partner that can help deliver on the full promise of modernized data archives by helping you map out your complicated landscape of data warehouse, legacy systems, and running applications. Ensure they can outline a clear 60-90-180 day timeline around data extracts and decommissions, ensuring you incur no unnecessary renewal fees or contract renegotiations. And make sure you partner with them to outline the outputs and data visualization modules your stakeholders expect from Day 1.

What is a modern data archiving strategy?

Data archival can take many different forms. Solutions are often limited in scope, often adopted to address one near-term challenge. Strategies are far-reaching, and designed to help modernize systems and prepare for future use cases. Read on for more about the difference between these two approaches:

Data archival solution | In our 25 years of experience, we’ve found that most healthcare systems already have an ‘archive’ solution in their toolkit, one they have used in the past. 

For most, these decisions were made in a vacuum, based on addressing an immediate need rather than a long-term objective or data archival strategy. In these cases, one vendor is typically chosen to do one legacy system, as inexpensively as possible, to solve a singular, immediate problem. These solution choices tend to err on the side of reactively solving an immediate issue, rather than a high-level view of where an archival approach fits into an organization-wide data management strategy. These solutions have a time and a place, but will often require modernization at some point down the line. 

Data archival strategy | Modernizing your archive is a long-view strategy for the future health of your organization, and involves a comprehensive look at your data, systems, and business objectives:  

    • Evaluating archiving in the context of a larger data management & retention strategy.
    • Focusing on known data use cases, as well as preserving access to that same data for yet unknown, future, technologies and initiatives.
    • Focusing on the preservation of discrete data, in context, so that meaning is preserved—and so teams can access discrete data elements for analytics, population health, AI, and other data-driven strategies.
    • Identifying a vendor partner that is using modern and supported technologies, such as Microsoft and The Cloud, in their archive solutioning. 
    • Partnering with a vendor that has a depth of experience in all types of sophisticated healthcare data and technology platforms. 
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