The email management rollout that doesn't need a change management plan
IT leaders who have been through an enterprise software rollout know the pattern. Six months of implementation, and a year of chasing adoption that never reaches the levels that justified the investment. Ideagen Mail Manager deploys in 24 hours and reaches full adoption within weeks - because it works inside Outlook, not alongside it.
Why do traditional document management systems take 6-8 months to implement?
AEC firms that have been through a Newforma or similar enterprise DMS rollout know the pattern. Implementation can stretch across six to eighteen months. There's infrastructure to configure, workflows to redesign, and extensive training to plan. By the time the system is live, the business has invested significant time and budget before a single email has been filed.
The deeper problem is what happens after go-live. These platforms require users to leave their existing tools to interact with a separate interface. Adoption rarely reaches the levels that justified the investment, and the rising costs become hard to defend when the only feature seeing consistent use is email filing.
Mail Manager was designed to break this pattern. It's an Outlook add-in that connects to your existing SharePoint or DMS folder structure and requires no data migration. Engineers never leave Outlook.
Mail Manager deploys in 24 hours using your existing folder structure
Mail Manager connects to the filing locations your firm already uses. If you're on SharePoint, it maps to your existing project folders. If you're migrating from another system, it can point directly at those same locations and begin indexing historical emails from day one. Ideagen provides dedicated account representatives through both trial and implementation.
DIALOG, a multidisciplinary design practice of architects, engineers, and planners across Canada and the US, made this transition after nearly five years on Newforma. They ran a pilot with 25-30 users, surveying the group against their Newforma experience - over 90% preferred Mail Manager. When they went live across the wider business, adoption was immediate. Kenny Thurston, Manager of Technology Experience at DIALOG:
"Literally within a 24-hour period of saying hey, this is going to come through and we're going to start launching a product - now you're using it. Adoption started to skyrocket for us. Email filing didn't really skip a beat, and we're still seeing that usage climb today."
Why do 58% of AEC professionals push back against new software - and how do you avoid it?
Ideagen's 2024 research across 188 senior IT decision-makers found that 58% agreed end users push back against new IT software, with 60% saying it's challenging to resolve their issues. These are real numbers, but they describe the experience of deploying tools that demand behaviour change.
Mail Manager sidesteps this because the only change is a filing prompt that appears when engineers send or close an email, suggesting the right project folder based on machine learning that improves with use. Filing is a single click. The system learns from your team's patterns rather than imposing a new structure, which is why the firms using it see adoption climb over time rather than spike and collapse after the first few weeks.
The first email you find in a dispute pays for the system
The real justification for email management in AEC isn't productivity - it's the first time your firm needs to produce a critical email during a dispute and does it in seconds rather than days. That single moment covers the cost of the system many times over.
Ideagen Mail Manager supports over 50,000 users across 2,500+ firms worldwide.
