Email has become a widely used tool for organizations of all sizes. It is used to keep in touch with customers and partners, to promote products and services, to collaborate on a document or presentation as well as to keep in touch with colleagues and friends. It is even used as a storage and archival system for business communications and related attachments.
The ever increasing amount of emails held in inboxes, sent folders, and other folders puts organizations at risk and adversely impacts server performance. Email servers were never designed to act as repositories for large quantities of emails and the control of this vital information should not move away from the organization. Without the management of emails, it is difficult for organizations to meet their legal preservation requirements in the event of litigation and government investigations, increasing the effort and cost in responding to e-discovery and disclosure.
AIIM has found that a third of organizations do not have a policy for dealing with legal discovery and 40% might need to search back-up tapes to find emails that could be relevant to litigation. The AIIM survey also found that 84% would have no way to justify why emails of a certain age or type had been deleted. Only 19% have the facility to move important emails into a document or records management system, or a dedicated email management system, and 45% of respondents are still filing their important emails in personal Outlook folders.
Email Life-Cycle Management
Email management solutions capture and store all emails on a central server instead of locally on each user's workstation. Metadata, such as Sender, Recipient, Subject, Date and other data can also be captured to facilitate very rapid search of email archives. It is also possible to capture the contents of emails thus allowing search by any word of phrase in the email body. Further, classification schemes can be used to manage email archives and apply retention periods and access controls to preserve important information according to corporate policies and in adherence with regulatory compliance acts.
Other important benefits of email management solutions include lower administration overheads and cost reductions of the storage space on the email server since older emails are moved to a different repository. These solution are also very efficient at eliminating duplicate storage of identical items. For example, if an email containing 20 MB of attachments is received and is CC'd to 10 other employees, then the solution would store only 20 MB and establish links between all email copies and the attachments. This provides significant advantages over decentralized email where in this example, 200 MB of storage would have been utilized.
Email management solutions play a significant and effective role in managing an organization's email archive. Their benefit can however be amplified if they form a part of a larger solution that incorporates records management programs, consisting of organization-wide policies and procedures, staff and activities, in which these computer applications can be successfully utilized.
Contact Enara today to learn how we can help you with your email management requirements.