RM_A Architects is a multi-award-winning architectural firm based in North London. Established over 30 years ago, the firm has a substantial portfolio of successfully completed projects, with particular expertise in the regeneration of urban brownfield sites with mixed-use and residential-led projects. RM_A’s team of 45-staff pride themselves on being client-focused, offering a responsive, efficient, personal service with site-specific creative solutions that add value.
Prior to implementing Mail Manager, RM_A had a very manual email saving process. The firm stored all of their current and historic emails within Microsoft Public Folders that specific teams were able to access within Outlook, and although they had these different folders for each project and other administrative needs, they struggled to ensure staff were keeping these updated.
Mark McGechan, Director at RM_A Architects explained, “Important emails would frequently remain locked in people’s individual inboxes. More diligent staff would have to allocate time to file their email inboxes on a regular basis, some more frequently than others. Whilst they might have regularly filed their inbox, they were often less disciplined at filing their sent items.”
Another issue that the practice frequently came up against was they found it increasingly difficult to search for the information they needed within Outlook folders. Mark noted that the default Outlook search capabilities were quite limited and extremely slow.
Prior to adopting Mail Manager, RM_A had explored their options with several competitive solutions over the years but found that quite often, these vendors included extra functionality they didn’t have a business requirement for. Mark explained, “These products were generally expensive and daunting in the extent of change they would require to integrate into our workflow. We were concerned that these products would require significant implementation time, management and cost, and would tie us into a single product for the long term.”
Mark continued, “In contrast, Mail Manager appealed because it was a simple product for streamlining our email archiving and management alone, which would be relatively simple to implement. It appeared to offer good value.”
After rolling out Mail Manager throughout the firm, RM_A have seen a significant improvement in the amount of project-specific emails that are filed. All staff are now able to find and read project emails, even if they weren’t directly sent to them, which has huge benefits for all.
When asked how Mail Manager has impacted his day-to-day, Mark said, “My job requires significant email communication with clients, consultants, sub-contractors, construction system suppliers and regulatory authorities across multiple projects. I also have to interact with staff, IT suppliers and other consultants. Being able to keep on top of my email inbox and to quickly access messages sent or received is invaluable.”
“I can currently search just under 1 million emails using Mail Manager. This is easily searched using multiple search criteria, so we can find information quickly and efficiently which is helpful for both current and historic projects. Since the pandemic, with the increased use of Teams video calls, I have found Mail Manager particularly helpful to quickly find emails or attachments on the fly to answer queries raised in workshops or meetings.”
“We’re able to use Mail Manager to search back through historic emails, and it's frequently very helpful to go back and find the information we need years down the line.”
To summarise Mail Manager’s impact on the firm, Mark said “Time-saving. It's simple and easy to use.”
