I&L Consulting Ltd is a relatively new consultancy firm based in London and Manchester, providing civil and structural engineering expertise throughout the southeast, midlands and north of England. I&L specialises in industrial and logistics project and have extensive experience in dealing with complex and problematic sites requiring innovative solutions.
I&L’s project visibility nightmare
Like many other engineering firms struggling with poor information visibility, I&L Consulting faced similar challenges. They often worked on various projects, and teams and departments didn’t have access to those email correspondence across the business. This is what first prompted the firm to look for an email management solution.
Before implementing Mail Manager, I&L Consulting had a very integrated filing system, where they would file emails in a system like that of an intranet. In a recent webinar, Tom Thornton, Engineer at I&L Consulting, described the firm’s email struggles. Tom commented, "There were no plugins for Outlook. Nothing really allowed us to search through emails."
He continued, "Another employee had to sieve through and then file the emails that were dumped in folders." A key concern was that staff were not proactively managing their inboxes., which caused constrains on their Outlook storage space. He explained, "We'd constantly need to go around to people working on a specific job and ask them to file their emails."
The worst thing for the firm, as described by Tom, was the inconsistency in email filing. Tom commented, "People were either not filing emails properly, or not at all. It made it hard to access correspondence or follow email conversations...To try and find a structured conversation between client contractor and ourselves, was just a nightmare."
Why transitioning to Mail Manager “was a breath of fresh air"
Once I&L Consulting began the transition to Mail Manager, Tom described the process as, "a breath of fresh air." He added," When you finally get Mail Manager, it's seamless. All your inbox is integrated and filed into categories and subcategories which are job specific. It's all accessible to everyone. So, you no longer have to file emails individually, it does it all for you automatically."
Mail Manager’s Filing Assistant has proven to be quite valuable for the business, as it automates the filing of older emails left in an inbox. Tom explained, "Through the user interface preferences, you can choose how long you want the information to sit in subfolders."
Life one year since using the software on all projects
I&L has now been using Mail Manager for just over a year, rolling out the software to all projects and across the business. All users have found it easier to locate emails using Mail Manager's search function. Tom commented, "we now have quick access to all our projects, not only the ones I'm working on myself but all the projects within the company. So, if there's a job I haven't worked on before, and someone asks me to find a specific piece of information related to the job, it's pretty simple."
Tom then discussed how he's been using the Mail Manager mobile app for remote access on his phone, "If you're in a client meeting, and you need to find a specific email, it's very simple to use. It's just a wonderful program from our point of view."
To date, Mail Manager has been adopted by 15 users within the business, and approximately 25 projects are currently being used with Mail Manager. These numbers continue to grow as the business expands its staff and projects every day.
At the end of the webinar, a guest asked Tom whether staff have been filing more emails now than before, Tom answered, "Definitely. That's basically the crunch of it. It's not having to go around to individuals with the company asking; ‘have you got the correspondence relating to this issue?’ You don't have to ask people to file emails because it all just gets done. I know I can just go to the search function and search what I'm looking for and know it will be there."
If you'd like to hear more about I&L Consulting’s experience using Mail Manager, you can watch the full webinar recording here. Alternatively, if you'd like to try the software out for yourself, download a free trial today!
