Deciding if Your Business Needs Email Archiving

How necessary is Email Archival appliance for my business? Other than compliance with industry standards, how critical is archiving Email to my business? These and more questions continue to confound business owners on a day-to-day basis.

How will Email Archiving help?

Most business processes generate high-volumes of Email. And these guzzle all types of resources: storage, bandwidth, huge backups, and  PST sprawl. Even with a dedicated IT team, there is continual  fire-fighting over email related business processes.

Then, the time lost in finding mails: Research in 2006, by Butler group, found that one-quarter of work days were spent in mining emails for information. Corroborating reports too find that nearly 15% to 35% of work hours are spent on information search.

The statistics remain the same today, even if you were to try personal archiving: nearly an hour per week for every employee will be engaged in this task.

Result: Fragmented SLA, high procedural costs, productivity is affected.

Complex errors occur: It may also lead to errors, such as sales teams using old product rates to sign contracts or legacy letters affecting today’s decision.

In conclusion email systems are constantly overwhelmed, affecting performance as well generating expensive errors.

It also means that information errors will affect the business reputation (brand), costs and more.

Compliance in the Information Industry

The information industry’s regulatory bodies propose various guidelines for businesses and private consumption.

Complex compliance standards demand dedicated staff to manage content and the methods adopted to retain policies.

Result: Non-compliance leaves businesses vulnerable, and opportunities to be challenged successfully as well as high penalties.

These prove that the dynamic email environment needs a systematic archival system that is low-cost, flexible and optimized for productivity.

Benefits of Email Archiving

Email archiving products are evolving solutions that are geared to meet the dynamic environment in which they are used.

The solution you choose should be the best-fit for your organization.

The size of your organization and your capabilities will eventually help you decide on the solution: appliance, hybrid or cloud-based email archiving solutions.

When you have a dedicated IT team who can handle on-going technical challenges, then an hybrid solution is often recommended. However, do note that there will be additional on-site hardware and software required and also the personel to manage and maintain.

At the other end of the email archiving solution set is the cloud-based model. Low-cost of subscription and real-time access can make these inviting  for small start-up without IT support. But, there are concerns such as security and data ownership that must be considered.

The email archiving appliance solution can give you the best of worlds. It can provide you with the power and capabilities of the hybrid option, while also delivering the TCO that is often lower than the cloud. Without the technical and security headaches that come with the other two options.

Should it be an IT decision or a business decision?

Considering that Emails are used for both internal as well as external communication, and are vital documentation of the business, the decision to implement should be a business decision. The simplicity and power of an email archiving appliance can make this an easy decision that is acceptable to both the business and technological sides of the operation.

Expert Speak

As business move towards online communications, Email is an integral part of the ecosystem. Since most business processes are initiated by communication and data exchange, within the organization and with clients, agile solutions will offer better management, improve capabilities and performance of workforce besides compliance with industry requirements.

As email use continues to increase, email archiving too will evolve and will continue to increase in its relevancy as a necessary tool for businesses, big or small.