The challenge

Before Ideagen Mail Manager, Bath's emails lived on individual computers with no central record, and Outlook's search was the only option. When an employee left or passed away, their emails went with them, and Bath wouldn't know which computer to search. With the two primary offices on separate file servers 700 miles apart, staff in one location couldn't search the other at all. Phil Rothstein, Principal, describes the firm as having operated like two separate companies rather than one, a problem a VPN connection between the servers helped solve once a proper filing system was in place to make it worthwhile.

The solution

Several years ago, Bath designed a small chemical plant in Mexico for a US-based client. Two years after completion, the plant manager emailed to say a piece of equipment had failed, blamed Bath's design and expected them to pay for the replacement. The complication was that the Bath project manager who had made the relevant design decisions had passed away from COVID earlier that year, leaving no institutional memory to draw on. Except the emails.

Phil searched Ideagen Mail Manager for the project number and the equipment name, narrowing 200,000 emails to 25 within seconds. Adding "solvent" and "water" narrowed it to three. The second email was the client's project manager directing Bath to use a solvent-based system, and the third was Bath's PM acknowledging the instruction while encouraging the client to reconsider. The client never responded, meaning Bath had built exactly what they were told to build. The accusation became an apology, and the demand for payment became a request for a proposal. As Phil puts it: "We turned a possible claim into a probable new project with just a few seconds using the search engine."