Manage Email? Are You Kidding Me?

UNLESS, of course, the document (email) in question has already been properly disposed of, following the sanctioned and appropriate records retention policy. And so, there’s yet another example of the additional responsibilities that have been heaped onto the IT department in recent years. “Records management” was, once upon a time, a job better left to the librarian in the basement who knew how to file paperwork. But, naturally, the advent of electronically created, as well as stored, content of all kinds has led to yet another overlap in responsibility. At first, it was necessary for the technical staff to merely be vaguely familiar with the retention policy for electronic records. Nowadays, it’s common for the CIO to take an active role in the creation and development of the records plan.

Someone should get a raise.

Nature vs. Nurture
This overlap of technology and practice can be viewed from another angle. Think of it as sort of a “nature versus nurture” argument. In describing the various vendors’ approaches, Alan Pelz-Sharpe, a leading industry analyst with The Real Story Group, neatly described it roughly this way: (sorry, Alan, for my heavy excerpting here, but it’s worth looking at the distinguishing characteristics you draw out. Thanks in advance.)

“Like all markets, email archiving and management can be sliced and diced in various ways, but as a starting point to buyers, I tend to suggest first subdividing the vendors between those that are policy-centric and those that are archiving-centric. And, of course, figure out which particular category has more appeal and fit for your particular organization.

“The policy-centric vendors are those that offer the most advanced and sophisticated functions to provide records management-style capabilities to email. Most typically these vendors sell into larger enterprises and government departments. As such you’ll find them at the higher end in terms of cost and complexity to deploy, configure and run. This higher cost and complexity is justified for customers in heavily regulated environments or any enterprise that needs to closely monitor email content. It is also justified for those trying to filter out non-business related emails, archiving only true records.

“Archiving-centric vendors, just like their policy-centric competitors, sell mainly into larger enterprise or government markets. Though most of them provide some kind of policy management capabilities, their real appeal lies in their approach to archive optimization. These vendors tend to market more to the IT buyer than the business buyer, as their approach centers on backing up and actively archiving mail servers to maximize server and storage optimization.

“In some cases vendors accomplish this through novel and unique hardware and storage arrangements; others approach it through a deep and long understanding of broad archiving requirements.”

Organizations also need to think about a few other things:

• The opportunity costs that arise from losing whatever valuable corporate knowledge that exists within emails. It’s like all that stuff in your basement; you never know when you might need it. And, guaranteed, the day after you throw it away is the day you wish you had it.
• What do you do about rogue employees who abuse the email system, and send dangerous crap to their friends, colleagues or customers? And by dangerous, it could be anything from dirty jokes to sensitive business information... it all can hurt in different ways.
• To what degree do you expect employees to self-manage email, and make decisions about both the value AND the threat, as well as their stature as business records? There are automated systems that can help, but much of the time, it’s a human judgment call. Got a training plan in place for that?
• Don’t even get me started on the role email is (increasingly) playing in the customer experience aspect of your business. Your customers often don’t want to talk on the phone any more than you do. But they expect a reply to their email about that software upgrade to their iPad app in, like, two seconds. Good luck with that.

Email is a hydra-headed beast. And most of the heads have teeth. But, of course, many of the heads also bring great benefit and promise for business success. Take a look at these articles, visit the websites and read the analyst reports. I did, and have gained a tremendous respect for the topic of email management.