As
explored in a recent issue of Infonomics magazine, business users in 2007 received an average of 18 megabytes (MB) of email per day – and that figure is predicted to reach 28 MB per day by 2011 (according to the Radacati Group).1 Now let’s take a look at the broader implications. If you take that
2007 figure – 18 MB per day – and multiply it by 260 business days, you end up with a figure of 4.6 gigabytes (GB) of email per user per year!
But it gets worse. Call it “The Tyranny of Math.” If your organization has
1,000 employees, this figure rises to 4.6 terabytes of email per year. Radacati
also found that users sent and received an average of 133 emails per day. Again,
at 260 business days per year, this equates to almost 35,000 messages per user –
all of which you’ll have to search through in legal discovery, without proper
email management.
Clearly, email is not trivial – or free. On the contrary, it is a vital
business function involving vital business documents that should be addressed in
a strategic, professional manner just as you would any other essential business
practice. A recent AIIM study on email management, however, shows that email is
clearly not receiving the attention that it should.2
On the one hand, respondents confess to a shocking state of affairs; but on
the other, they seem steadfast in avoiding a solution. This is shame, because
getting on top of your email is not rocket science. The same Infonomics article
goes on to point out a number of very simple steps organizations can take to
start wrestling this beast back into its cage.
Good email hygiene begins with the identification of business-relevant emails
and a policy for the classification, storage and destruction of these emails in
accordance to, and consistent with, your business standards. From there,
establish guiding principles, reduce email glut, decide what to hold, identify
roles and responsibilities, automate when possible, and work with a
cross-functional team at your organization to address policies and practices.
With a few key principles in mind, let’s now take a look at some of the
findings in AIIM’s recent study. For the purposes of this report, an email
management system may be a specialized, standalone system or an integration of
an enterprise content management/records-management system with an email client.
Key Findings among all industry sectors
The study generated 10 key
findings across more than 19 markets responding. Among them:
--
On average, respondents spend more than 1.5 hours each day processing
their emails, with one in five spending three or more hours.
-- Over
half of users have hand-held access by phones, Blackberries and PDAs.
Two thirds process work-related emails after office hours with 28 percent
confessing to doing so “after work, on weekends and during vacations”.
-- “Sheer overload” is reported as the biggest problem with
email as a business tool, followed closely by “Finding and recovering past
emails” and “Keeping track of actions”.
-- Email archiving,
legal discovery, findability and storage volumes are the biggest current
concerns, with security and spam now considered less of a concern by our
respondents.
-- Over half of respondents are “not
confident” or only “slightly confident” that emails related to documenting
commitments and obligations made by staff are recorded, complete, and
retrievable.
-- Only 10 percent of organizations have
completed an enterprise-wide email management initiative, with 20 percent
currently rolling out a project. Even in larger organizations, 17 percent have
no plans to, although the remaining 29 percent are planning to start sometime in
the next 2 years.
Key Findings among the Healthcare, Chemical, and Pharmaceutical
Industries
Drilling down into Healthcare (HC) and Chemical &
Pharmaceutical (CP) responses, however, we can see the most salient trends in
these industries.
-- Only 5 percent of HCs and 4 percent of
CPs said they were “very confident” that emails related to documenting
commitments and obligations made by either themselves or their staff are
“recorded, complete, and retrievable.”
-- A full 70 percent of
HCs work on email outside of office hours, 27 percent doing so
virtually 24/7 – on weekdays, weekends, and on vacation.
-- 56
percent of CPs work on email outside of office hours, 22 percent doing
so virtually 24/7 – on weekdays, weekends, and on vacation.
-- 27
percent of HCs do not access email on mobile devices, while 41 percent
do so with a laptop, 38 percent do so with a Blackberry, and 11 percent do so
with other phones/PDAs.
-- 41 percent of CPs do not access
email on mobile devices, while 41 percent do so with a laptop, 41 percent use a
Blackberry, 11 percent use an iPhone, and 15 percent use other
phones/PDAs.
-- When asked to identify the three biggest
problems with email as a business tool, 62 percent of HCs cited sheer
overload, 46 percent cited keeping track of actions, and 38 percent cited FYI
and Reply-to-All copies.
-- When asked the same question,
63 percent of CPs cited sheer overload, 56 percent cited keeping track of
actions, and 52 percent cited FYI and Reply-to-All copies.
-- When
asked to cite the three largest issues of most concern regarding
emails, 49 percent of HCs cited email archive, 46 percent cited compliance and
legal discovery, 38 percent cited storage volumes, and 38 percent cited
findability across archive and live emails.
-- When asked the same
question, CPs cited email archive, 67 percent; compliance and legal
discovery, 63 percent; and storage volumes, 44 percent.
-- When
asked to name the two most prominent reasons they haven’t yet
implemented an email management strategy, 41 percent of HCs selected “we do not
view emails as a sufficient threat to our business to take action,” and 41
percent also selected “we would like to save emails to a records management
system, but we don’t have one.”
-- When asked the same question,
43 percent of CPs selected “we would like to save emails to a records
management system, but we don’t have one,” and 43 percent also selected “we
consider that our staff are taking responsibility to file emails appropriately
on paper or file shares.”
-- When asked “which of the following
would best describe standard practice in your organization for dealing
with important emails,” 72 percent of HCs cited “file in personal Outlook
folders.”
-- Asked the same question, by far the largest
response for CPs (at 40 percent) was also “file in personal Outlook folders.”
-- Only 6 percent of HCs and 5 percent of CPs use
SharePoint 2007 for email management and archiving.
-- 40 percent of
HCs cited a need for email management training based on industry best
practices, while 36 percent of CPs cited such a need.
Footnotes
1. See the AIIM “Industry Watch” market
intelligence report, “Email
Management: the good, the bad, and the ugly,” by Doug Miles. The
survey was taken by 1,109 individual members of the AIIM community in 2009,
using a Web-based tool. Invitations to take the survey were sent via e-mail to
AIIM’s international community of 65,000.
2. See the Sep/Oct 2009 issue of Infonomics magazine, “Best
Practices for Email Management
—email may be many things, but ‘free’ is not one of them.
Neither is ‘trivial’”. By Bob Larrivee.