As you have probably already noticed, at the end of April of this year the most powerful provider of email services, Google, made a valuable gift to its users – it updated the interface, improved the design and introduced new features in its Gmail application. This event has become one of the most notable in the global IT community this year, and more than a hundred articles have already been written about it. We, for our part, in honor of such a “holiday”, decided to reflect on the relevance of email as such: for the development of global business industries and in terms of its use as a corporate means of communication within companies.
Phil Simon is a well-known American speaker, professor and author of bestselling books on business management (the most famous are “Message Not Received”, “Too Important to Ignore”, “The Visual Organization” and others). In one of his interviews for the popular British online magazine Tech.co he said:
“I’m not anti-email, I’m anti-inefficiency. Email was never designed for collaboration. Managing a project or a to-do list via email? That’s insane.”
Those companies that still remain loyal to email usually assign three key functions to it inside the company:
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Internal communication: setting tasks, monitoring their completion, discussing current work issues and so on.1
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Document storage: structuring email threads dedicated to particular issues and keeping them for as long as necessary in email archives.2
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External communication: correspondence with customers or contractors, sending commercial proposals, discussing current issues with partners and more.3
Each of the above segments has its own inconveniences as well as numerous potential risks of information leakage. Let’s talk about this in more detail.
Disadvantages of corporate email for internal communication
Email was created more than 40 years ago and not at all for use by groups of people. Initially it was intended for the exchange of messages between two people on different computers. Today the functionality of an email inbox still does not really support team collaboration or the discussion of work-related issues in groups of more than two people.
Many company leaders prefer to ignore the limited capabilities of email and therefore encounter the following problems:
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Lack of structure within message threads when discussing a specific project task;
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Inability to monitor task completion stages and promptly respond to emerging issues;
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No way to organize effective teamwork and involve experts from outsourcing companies in brainstorming sessions.
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Likelihood of accidentally sending a message containing information not related to the topic of discussion, for example of a personal nature.
“The global oil service company Integrated Subsea Services Ltd, headquartered in Scotland, recently found itself at the center of a Twitter scandal after information about the personal life of a secretary with one of the company’s employees was made public. Melanie Anderson wrote a business email on top of her private correspondence with her lover, Eric Kenis, and sent it to all 89 employees at once. The thread contained a discussion of their sex life and soon appeared in tweets on the famous social network. A huge uproar followed and, as a result, the couple had to resign in order to escape constant gossip.”
Disadvantages of corporate email for document storage
Many aspects of business require long-term storage of documents for their further use in potential disputes or even in court proceedings. In many countries legislation has already been introduced that allows the seizure of electronic information in force majeure situations, and if documents are not preserved, severe financial penalties may be imposed.
What types of messages exist in terms of required retention periods?
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Messages with short retention periods – those that have no value for tomorrow, i.e. technical correspondence that should be deleted at the end of the working day or, at most, at the end of the work week.
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Messages with medium retention periods – those that have significant business value and should be stored in the email system for 3–7 years.
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Messages with long retention periods – emails containing very important information, precise figures or attached contracts and other critical documents. Such messages are recommended to be stored for more than 7 years.
The classification by retention type is determined by the heads of each individual department. Every employee needs to be trained on this and given precise instructions on the rules for deleting certain emails.
As you can see, the system is far from perfect, which entails a number of serious problems:
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The human factor – if an employee does not follow the instructions for deleting emails accurately enough, the resulting error can have disastrous consequences for the entire company;
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Huge volumes of information – all this has to be “stored” in the email system, and its capacity is not infinite.
"World-renowned business consultant, vice president of Zasio Enterprises Inc. and author of the high-profile book “Information and Document Management: Document-Based Information Systems”, David O. Stephens, once gave a talk titled “Ten Key Issues Driving Developments in Records Management Today” at the New York chapter of ARMA International. He formulated the problem as follows: “Some employees simply will not identify and delete messages of a transitory nature, and certain workers who send and receive messages that require long-term or permanent retention will not systematically identify them and remove them from the messaging environment.”"
Disadvantages of corporate email for external communication
The main problem in this area is information leakage. All data stored on email servers is intended exclusively for internal use, yet very often information seeps outside, causing major trouble for the company and significant financial losses for its owners.
How does this happen?
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Intentionally by an employee – when someone with access to internal information deliberately sends it to external email addresses in order to steal data.
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Accidentally by an employee – when confidential information goes out into the world because an email is mistakenly sent to an incorrect address.
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As a result of hacker attacks – when a person or a group of people hacks the company’s email system in order to disrupt its operations.
"In September 2017, the online magazine The Guardian published shocking news that one of the world’s largest audit and consulting firms, the London-based Deloitte, had been subjected to cyberattacks by an unknown group for a period of two months. The attackers hacked its corporate email system and intercepted more than 240,000 employee messages. The investigation showed that the perpetrators were located in the state of Virginia (USA), but nothing more has so far been discovered about them."
In addition to the risk of losing confidential data, there is another equally important problem in the use of email for external communication — viruses. These are malicious programs that spread very quickly and whose main purpose is to disrupt computer systems. They infiltrate the internal digital environment in the form of an attachment to an email. Once one of the employees receives and opens such a file on their computer, failures begin across the company’s entire electronic system. Such incidents usually cost business owners a lot of money, and the lost information may never be recovered.
The peak of email’s popularity came in 2008. At least that is what the renowned New York online magazine Fast Company wrote in one of its articles. The same article also published forecasts that email will cease to exist for personal use by 2044, while some representatives of the corporate sector will continue to use it for another 5–7 years at most. The main reasons for this are its inefficiency and the lack of sufficient confidentiality.
Is it worth the candle? This decision is, of course, yours to make — for your employees and your company. But remember: the more effective your internal communication system is, the more productive your work processes will become! By using Linoza Task Manager and Linoza Knowledge Base you will move to a new level of quality in communication management, corporate information storage and staff training.
Sources:
- https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/sep/25/deloitte–hit–by–cyber–attack–revealing–clients–secret–emails
- https://tech.co/phil–simon–message–not–received–2015–04
- https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article–2268313/Embarrassed–receptionist–fiance–resign–accidentally–sent–email–discussing–sex–life–entire–office.html
- https://www.fastcompany.com/1661288/open–thread–end–email
- https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/30946025?selectedversion=NBD11143493
- https://m.habr.com/ru/news/t/494414