MSA Professional Services is a predominate engineering and architectural firm employing 450 professionals dedicated to civil infrastructure projects. Their expertise spans buildings, water treatment, roads and municipal services. Leading the charge in digital transformation, Jaime Kurten, the Digital Design Manager, oversees the operational technology and process improvements within the company.
The need for an email management solution became apparent when MSA transitioned from on-premise Outlook to a more expansive Microsoft environment. This expanded the size and file limits on Outlook inboxes, leading to significant challenges.
Employees frequently hit their inbox capacity, hindering email receipt and causing storage problems. Emails were often not saved in the appropriate project folders, even though they needed to be captured for future retention and risk management.
Locating specific emails would prove to be a time-consuming task, especially when accessing past correspondence. If there was a claim, staff found it an arduous process to sweep through different inboxes to try and find what they were looking for.
Additionally, a proprietary plugin developed by MSA’s IT team, which was designed to enable staff to select project folders for filing, lacked the required indexing and search functionality, making compliance with email filing policies difficult. Jaime Kurten explains, “We were having a hard time with compliance with our plug-in because people couldn't find their emails once they were filed.”
In search of a more efficient email management solution, MSA Professional Services adopted Ideagen Mail Manager. The decision was driven by its innovative features, particularly its ability to index and search emails efficiently. Jaime recalled, “It ended up being connected a little bit to an inbox size project, as well as just overall file retention and email retention policies, amongst other things, to reduce the size of inboxes, get emails into project folders and just have less in your inbox overall.”
Influenced by the product’s credibility, having been developed by the globally recognized firm Arup, and a recommendation from an engineer within MSA, also played a significant role.
Ideagen Mail Manager has now simplified the process of managing emails, saving time and reducing the burden on employees to manually organize their inboxes. By ensuring that emails are correctly filed and easily retrievable, MSA Professional Services can better comply with retention policies and prepare for potential legal cases.
The search functionality is highly valued by MSA Professional Services. Jaime highlighted the speed and efficiency of the search feature, which has significantly improved the ability to locate long-buried emails. In her advice to other firms Jaime mentions, “You might not truly understand the value of Mail Manager until you actually put it into action...,” acknowledging that while the transition may require an adjustment period, the long-term advantages in email management and compliance are well worth it. In Jaime’s words, Ideagen Mail Manager has been a game-changer.
Employees now have peace of mind knowing that their emails are properly managed, allowing them to focus on their core responsibilities without worrying about email organization.
