The challenge

When managing multiple projects, some across global teams, the need for transparent team communication is crucial to the success of each project. After spending too many valuable IT hours on e-discovery needs for project clarification and legal compliance, Nitsch Engineering saw room for improvement in how email communication was shared and stored.

“We were searching for a tool that wasn’t overcomplicated and difficult for our users to adapt to,” said Joyce Husseini, IT Director. “We wanted something that would provide us the facilities to easily centralize our emails, supplement our QA policy with regard to data retention, and allow us to quickly retrieve necessary information when required.”

The results

After reviewing several options, Joyce determined that most email management products simply “scoop and dump” excess emails from the email server to their own proprietary servers. This approach was costly and locked information in a way that didn’t allow for ease of e-discovery or potential future transition to another system.

Nitsch Engineering decided on Mail Manager because it met the specific criteria in functionality and usability. An additional selling point was how Mail Manager worked in sync with Microsoft Outlook to integrate user habits for filing emails into the daily routine of sending and receiving email correspondence.

“We liked how Mail Manager learned the habits of each user and prompted them to properly file emails to standard network locations each time an email was sent,” said Joyce. “This centralization of emails eliminated hours of time in e-discovery from both a user and IT perspective. And we were pleasantly surprised with how easy it was to deploy Mail Manager and how quickly all of our users adapted to the tool.”

“Before the Mail Manager roll-out, our email server was becoming overstuffed with project emails and their respective attachments,” said Joyce.

She estimated Nitsch Engineering was storing 222 Gigabytes of data, which was slowing down the email server. After implementing Mail Manager that number decreased to 35 Gigabytes of data within 3 months.

“From a financial perspective, we have effectively saved ourselves in excess of $10,000 in storage costs and we continue to save staff countless hours associated with e-discovery,” said CPA Michael Kenealy, VP and CFO. “Since the AEC market, by nature, is highly litigious, Mail Manager also reduces our risk through improved legal compliance. With the enhanced search capabilities we have effectively streamlined our procedure for locating and providing email documentation from a costly and time-consuming project down to a matter of a few minutes. That added security in this industry provides more than just cost savings – it provides peace of mind.”