Established in 1985, BKSK Architects is a 6-partner, 45-person design firm of architects and interior designers. They drive projects forward by offering a full range of services - from conceptual studies to post-occupancy evaluation, and everything in-between.
Based in New York City, and leaders in the field of sustainable architecture, BKSK Architects are steeped in both the complexity of the urban fabric and the intricacy of environmental forces.
Prior to Mail Manager, BSKS Architects had been using MAC hardware, along with Kerio Connect software to manage their emails. They found this infrastructure quite limiting, but they did love one feature... the use of public folders.
The company eventually decided to switch to Office 365 to manage their emails. BKSK Architects' IT & Software Specialist, Rick Bernstein commented: "I've never felt they had any decent solution for filing email on a project basis." The company tried to resolve this by putting processes in place for Microsoft Teams, and creating a new team for each project, but all in all, Rick confirmed: "the process of managing information was a mess".
When asked about the main issues BSKS Architects faced in their email management, Rick commented: "Firstly, finding information was a challenge, things were being filed, but Teams was not designed for how we were using it. The second issue was the feeling of unease that if we were forced to document decisions made on a project, we might not necessarily get the one critical email filed. So this was a big pain point for us."
It was clear to BKSK Architects that they needed to overhaul their email and information management processes. Rick commented, "As soon as we found there was a solution that allowed us to reliably file, without putting the staff through tremendous pain, we signed up in record speed."
During the implementation process, BKSK Architects decided it would be best to roll out the software company-wide, meaning everyone was using it immediately. From day one when sending an email, their team were prompted to file, making their information management consistent across the board.
According to Rick: "Before Mail Manager, only 70% of people in the office would file their emails, and 30% of the people had never filed an email in their life... The great thing about Mail Manager is that there is no opt-out. There's no little button to turn off Mail Manager, so staff have to follow our procedure of managing emails."
"It gives us easy access to the information we need, and security in terms of being able to defend ourselves in case of a lawsuit or something in the future. Mail Manager enhances the coverage that we get in terms of filing our emails, close enough to 100% that I can sleep at night."
Within 6-months of adopting Mail Manager, a new product release meant that the software now supported '.email' formatting for filed emails. This meant that almost overnight, BKSK Architects were able to back up 15-years' worth of emails onto a legacy server. Rick commented: "When somebody needs to look at an old project, I can easily add that location just for them. It's really great stuff. Everybody has access to any email that we either used on Outlook or in our previous system with no problems whatsoever... The biggest benefit that I have is that I can go into a legacy project and give someone access easily."
