Email being what it is, one dreams of revenge...

Email being what it is, one dreams of revenge. As a communication tool no one can deny its business value – but the rampant growth of email in corporations has created insurmountable problems and unsustainable practices. In the past eighteen months I’ve spent many weeks visiting with organizations and hearing first-hand the challenges and issues they are facing due to poor email management practices—and while the issues are multi-fold and complex, the one reality I see that is as recurring as it is disheartening, is that massive corporate costs and risks directly correlate to the volume of information retained. In other words, as companies we are incurring enormous, often litigation-related costs, that are driven up by the amount of email we seem to be haphazardly saving.

Every company I speak with understands that it’s time for a change – but they also understand that most business users spend the majority of their working day in their email application, and trying to enforce some corporate control against that environment is bound to incur user apprehension, if not full-scale revolt. At Open Text, we uphold an innovative and forward-looking philosophy on email management – it’s one that characterized as much by facilitating corporate goals of retaining and destroying email responsibly, as it is by providing an accommodating user experience. Our product strategy is designed to ensure users not only adopt a policy and practice because they are good corporate citizens – but more importantly, because they actually derive personal value by participating in the first place.

Over the next several weeks, leading up to both the ARMA Conference in mid October and Open Text Content World in the latter half of the month, I’ll be sharing some insights here about the conversations I’ve had with companies around the world. Along the way we’ll share some of the rationale that contributed to the design strategy for our forthcoming Open Text Email Management 10, an innovative product conceived with one fundamental goal: help companies end the mismanagement of email.