Email is now the go-to for most correspondence and important communication – it’s the letter of today. And this means that a typical inbox is full of written actions, agreements, attachments and more. Inboxes can easily become cluttered, unorganised and chaotic. Your information can be hard to find.
Why does email matter?
The importance of email in business
Years back, employees and
businesses would communicate
by formal letters. These were on
headed paper, printed out, and
mailed. They’d then wait for the
post to be delivered.
businesses would communicate
by formal letters. These were on
headed paper, printed out, and
mailed. They’d then wait for the
post to be delivered.
Then came email...
While document and record management processes are usually well-oiled, email is the one thing people tend to manage differently. Some will file and organise their inbox diligently, while others don’t organise any and leave tens of thousands in their inbox. So, if everyone isn’t managing their email, then the business only sees part of the picture. Or they won’t have the full context.
This can result in a productivity drain trying to find correspondence, low levels of visibility across the business about who said what and when, enhanced risk as emails can be used against them in court, and, for regulated businesses in particular, incomplete audit trails.
What does unmanaged email look like?
Email matters
The digital innovators in the communication space have long said that email will die. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Rather, email is actually thriving. More emails are being sent every day and chat platforms such as Teams and Slack are preferred for internal or informal communication, rather than for important client or project work.
Read more of our real-world use case stories here:
Meet John
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Take John, for instance. John had run projects for years, he sees value in some of the traditional approaches to project management around being disciplined, organised and maintaining audit trails to deliver better outcomes for clients and avoid things going wrong.
John worked with colleagues collaboratively although continually noticed not everyone cared about administration and project management as much as him. Many colleagues were just doing their best to keep up with the ever-increasing volume of work, and many were just happy to send or receive information and hope they never had to see it again.
One day, a colleague was off for the day, John had to visit the client, and was asked why they’d decided to instruct the Contractor. John looked for the email, but it was in his colleague's inbox who had been working on the subject. John was left embarrassed and unable to back up why a key decision was taken.
John vowed to never be put in that position again, he educated colleagues on the consequences of not managing or filing correspondence properly. His colleagues felt that John’s approach to filing and record-keeping wasn’t sustainable with the current volumes of information they receive. They needed a solution that they could implement quickly, wouldn’t disrupt their current productivity levels, and would mean that everyone became like John.
They explored Mail Manager, and quickly saw, how people would find it easier to file emails than not file them, meaning project files would be populated with everything in it. They also identified that searching correspondence could deliver real-time savings to employees, imagine if they weren’t just confined by the information in their inbox and could see everything on a project.
Two days later, a client called, John answered the phone, but wasn’t up to speed on the question being asked, his colleague was off, he typed in the client’s name, and quickly saw all of the emails exchanged that week, and was never on the back foot again.
Meet Mary
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Or, meet Mary. Mary had been struggling to keep up with her email for months. Her inbox was constantly cluttered and she was always behind on responding to messages. Plus, she could never find an important project email when she needed to. She had tried a few different email management solutions, but they all failed to meet her needs.
Then one day, she stumbled upon Mail Manager. Mail Manager's machine learning capabilities caught her eye and she decided to give it a try. She was amazed at how easy it was to use and how seamlessly it integrated with Outlook.
Within minutes, she was able to file important emails to the right location and start reducing the risk of lost emails. Plus, she could find any relevant email within seconds, rather than days, even if she wasn’t cc’d on the original email. She was so happy with Mail Manager that she recommended it to all of the companies she worked with. Thanks to Mail Manager, Mary was finally able to take control of her email and get more done in less time.
