Email is often considered an afterthought compared to the digital transformation and cloud migration projects that many organisations are tackling. However, the vast amount of information shared via email means it can have business-critical consequences if it’s not managed effectively.
IT leaders are responsible for employees having the resources to store data securely and making life easier for people all across their organisations. They need to make it quick and easy for anyone to find the emails they need when they need them and ensure critical data is always stored securely and in the most appropriate location.
Where businesses are struggling with email management
Poor email management increases the risk of critical data being lost, employees becoming less productive and organisations struggling to meet their regulatory requirements. Common consequences of poor email management strategy include:
People continue to struggle with email
Email remains by far and away the most used communication medium for businesses all over the world. Our recent study of architecture, engineering and construction leaders found that 91% of people use email to communicate with clients and 61% prefer it to tools like Skype and Slack. It also found email is crucial to maintaining good record management (87%), data visibility (86%) and quality management (84%).
However, it’s also the riskiest communication method. More than 319 billion emails are sent every day, yet everyone has their own unique way of managing sent and received messages. This lack of a uniform approach causes headaches for project managers, business leaders and directors, who often struggle to find the information they need when they need it. It’s also a struggle for all employees, who end up having to spend hours taming their inbox and searching for one email amongst thousands.
Weak email management comes at a heavy cost
Poor data management can have catastrophic effects. It leaves businesses vulnerable to cyber-attacks and puts them at greater risk of data loss. This can result in lost revenue, market share and customer confidence that, in turn, can lead to fines, regulatory punishment and legal action. Indeed, the average cost of global disputes is $30.7 million, according to Arcadis 2020 Global Construction Disputes Report, which also found disputes increased over the previous 12 months.
Poor email management also has a significant drain on employee productivity. For example, our research found that one-third of employees spend at least one hour per day managing their email inboxes and 70% believe it’s one of the most significant productivity drains on workforces.
Poor privacy has significant risks
The sudden rise of remote working has placed an even greater emphasis on secure data storage and privacy. Employees are increasingly working from various disparate locations, accessing information from multiple networks, devices and applications, making information access and privacy control more challenging than ever.
IT leaders need to take control by storing all their project information in centralised locations that are secure yet accessible to all authorised employees at any time and from anywhere. This removes the risk of project data being locked away in individual employee inboxes or on their desktops, making information inaccessible to other team members.
Improve your email management with Mail Manager
The good news is that these everyday struggles can easily be solved by using the right technology. Mail Manager is an Outlook add-in solution that enables you to take total control of your organisation’s email management.
Mail Manager enables you to deliver:
Privacy control: With Mail Manager, all employees can automatically file documents and emails to secure, centralised locations that follow your privacy and security procedures. Data is organised into Collections, which mirror your existing filing structures and can be located on any server, and Locations, which break this into individual projects and topics. This central filing process ensures complete data visibility, removes the risk of document duplication and allows sensitive data to be protected by restricted access rights.
Efficient and organised data structure: Mail Manager automatically files received and sent emails into the most appropriate files and folders. It learns your employees’ filing habits and your company’s filing structure to understand where specific types of communication need to be stored. This prevents essential data, such as contracts or scope changes, from being deleted or lost and makes it available to all project team members.
Instant search capabilities: Employees frequently spend hours searching for the proverbial email needle in a haystack. And those hours could be in vain if an email has been locked away in another team member’s inbox or desktop. Our research found 56% of employees are frustrated by not being able to find specific data in their inboxes, which wastes valuable time and kills their productivity levels. Mail Manager removes this frustration by enabling employees to find the particular information they need immediately. Its artificial intelligence (AI) powered search function allows users to find any document or email stored on their databases within two seconds. This is especially important with remote workforces, enabling people to immediately find data whenever they need it and wherever they’re located.
Improved project leadership: Getting a tighter grip on email management enables your project leaders to stay in control of client requests and project scope changes. They have access to all project communication and information, regardless of whether they copied on emails or not. As a result, client agreements are more likely to be met on time, contracts are more likely to be delivered upon as agreed and legal disputes are less likely.
Improved data security: With your emails automatically filed into secure folders, you know where critical data is and who has access to it. This is vital to not only being better organised but also protecting sensitive information and preventing unauthorised access.
Regulatory compliance: It’s increasingly important to have data privacy under control to meet stringent data regulations and legislation. Mail Manager helps you securely store data in the most appropriate location while making it accessible to everyone that requires access. This is crucial to establishing better audit trails, which help you avoid regulatory action, fines and reputational damage.
Improved storage capabilities: Storing data, documents and emails in centralised folder ensures information isn’t clogging up your users’ inboxes. This makes their inboxes easier to manage, helps them find the information they need faster, prevents data from getting lost and removes the risk of running out of storage space.
Implement data management best practices: Mail Manager simplifies the process of securing emails and critical data. It helps you implement security best practices across your organisation, including:
- Restrict view and read access to sensitive documents and emails.
- Ensure uniformity across data storage and email filing processes.
- Ensure all employees can discover client or project correspondence whenever they need it.
- Ensure project information isn’t stored on computer desktops or inbox folders.
How improved email management helps your business
Omaha-based architecture and design firm Holland Basham had been using Outlook public folders to store emails on its on-premise server. This saw costs and file storage rack up and employees had to be careful about which emails they filed, which inevitably led to them ignoring email filing protocols and data being lost altogether. A new incompatible solution only led to users getting more confused.
Holland Basham turned to Mail Manager, which helped boost data security and automatically filed emails correctly while enabling users to retain their individual email filing preferences. The firm also benefited from a powerful search capability, which was crucial to encouraging collaboration and boosting productivity between its team of people located all across the United States.
Take control of your email management
Mail Manager helps you never lose an email again and guarantees the security of your critical data. It ensures all your employees follow the same filing processes, precisely discover any project data they need within seconds and comply with strict data privacy levels.
Find out more about how to implement an email management solution by downloading our free guide here.
