E-mail management and the corporate bottom line

E-mail has to a large extent displaced traditional corporate communication systems like postal services, couriers and faxes, and has become an integral part of daily business operations.

However, cautions Paul Mullon, marketing director of Metrofile, the power of e-mail as a business tool is compromised by the lack of centralised administration and records management inherent to traditional communication systems. Here he looks at the vulnerability of companies against the backdrop of legal and regulatory ramifications.

No one would dispute that e-mail is a reliable, fast, inexpensive and widely accessible means of communication. The attachment of spreadsheets, documents, presentations and graphics to e-mail only adds to its potency. However, companies with no formal e-mail archiving policy are walking through a minefield of business risks that can explode without warning, resulting in significant loss - of corporate information, productivity, and from fines and judgments arising from legal issues.

Research shows that globally at least 31 billion e-mails are sent each day, and that a typical 3 000-user e-mail system handles more than 1TB of message traffic annually.

With no central means of classifying, indexing, filing, storing, and retrieving e-mail, it`s no wonder some sort of fallout is imminent.

While most companies find e-mail volume hard enough to manage from an individual user point of view, they are unaware of the hidden issues around e-mail as they relate to legal ramifications, inaccessible corporate knowledge, and operating costs.

When a letter is sent, a copy is stored in a filing system using a pre-defined indexing system. Similarly, faxes are retained and filed as originals. When needed for later use or review, these items are easily retrieved. Not so with e-mail messages. And because attachments can be included with messages, or viruses embedded in HTML-enabled communication, e-mail is vulnerable to virus attacks that can cripple an entire organisation. Once infected with a virus, organisations may experience system damage or a complete loss of e-mail messages and archives, which in turn affects productivity. In May 2000, for example, the Love Bug virus brought millions of computers worldwide to a standstill and caused an estimated $8 billion in damage, largely from lost productivity.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to locate information when it`s needed, and users spend countless hours searching for or reproducing data that is often inaccessible or lost. The increased use of e-mail also places a burden on IT administrators, who must deal with burgeoning message stores that bog down the e-mail servers. Because end-users don`t want to discard messages, there is a constant struggle to provide adequate storage space without compromising system reliability.

Meanwhile, management needs to protect confidential information contained in e-mail from loss, theft, or inappropriate disclosure. Just as important is an e-mail policy that prevents the waste of employee time and computer resources due to spam and other non-productive mail.

Finally, despite the fact that e-mail is an integral part of business communication, the lack of administrative control over e-mail jeopardises records management procedures and the ability to comply with regulatory and legal requirements. Without a formal filing and retention policy, past e-mails become a maze of unrelated communications that make responding to legal matters time-consuming and costly.

Other significant dangers for businesses that rely heavily on this ubiquitous form of communication include the risk of losing valuable corporate information; the hidden costs associated with e-mail that affect the bottom line; and the lack of visibility into how e-mail is used within the workplace. Each of these contributes to alarming vulnerability within businesses today.

It is estimated that 35% to 60% of business-critical information is stored in personal messaging systems, yet it is not effectively managed. These large personal libraries of e-mail messages are of growing interest to top management who wish to leverage this information and are concerned about the company`s exposure to costly legal discovery processes.

Few companies recognise e-mail as a valuable store of corporate information. This neglect often results in the loss of important information before a company even realises it is there.

The process of removing messages from the message store is becoming a weekly activity as e-mail volume grows and attachment sizes increase. Where do these messages go? Mostly they are either deleted or are moved into a local archive file, making the messages difficult to access or expunging them entirely from the system.

This inability to easily sift through archived e-mail messages presents companies with a complete lack of visibility within their own corporate communication records. Not only are they unable to understand what types of information are sent day-in and day-out through their messaging systems, and thus unable to identify and prevent misuse, but in the event that specific data is needed, most businesses would be unable to find it.

Because the question of effective e-mail management solutions has become a hot topic, the good news is that there are now options available to companies wanting to manage their e-mail as a record and as a knowledge store of valuable corporate data. Any effective solution for managing e-mail must include the following capabilities:

* Archival of e-mail documents and attachments and associated address and routing information in original electronic form;

* Creation of an e-mail policy that addresses message retention and filing requirements;

* Automatic and content-based classification of e-mail to folders within the system;

* Creation and execution of disposition instructions for each e-mail folder;

* Protection of the archive against unauthorised access;

* Inviolate auditing of administrator access to archived documents;

* Powerful search and retrieval tools for end users and administrators, based on a full-text index and user-defined metadata; and

* Use of random-access, low-cost, and non-volatile media for long-term storage.

Finally, e-mail should be handled as though it were any other type of information within the organisation. Records retention professionals should assist in determining what types of information need to be gathered, where it should be stored, and when it should be destroyed.

An e-mail management solution should both address these basic requirements and also add value by bringing the power of data management to e-mail systems, thus channelling the daily stream of e-mail messages and attachments into a tool that provides competitive advantage.