A View on Email Management
Balancing Multiple Interests and Realities of the Workplace

For several years now, email has been a real hot-button issue in the world of records management (RMA), particularly within the broad context of compliance, liability and knowledge management. Issues such as email storage and disk space usage, email integration into data repositories and comprehensive information search and retrieval, as well as more general discussions about how email should be interpreted, used and processed, have been intensively examined and commented on in the business press and various trade publications. As a result, one could argue that email as a discussion topic has matured to the point that the next generation of ideas about email archiving and management should be moving to the forefront.

For example, it's no longer necessary to convince people that email is a critical business tool or that email management needs to be a major component of any overriding information management process supporting compliance initiatives. Rather, the subject has matured enough to now be able to explore how email is currently being dealt with compared to original perceptions and prescriptions about it. Moreover, what new things can be said about the effectiveness of email archiving and management strategies, especially taking into account the realities of the workplaces where these strategies will be implemented? Given all the available knowledge, the time has come for honest discussions about the way email solutions should actually work.

Maturing Email Archiving and Management
One of the original questions driving the "email issue" was "what do we do with it?" Now that organizations have gained insight into email, at least in terms of acknowledging the importance of managing and retaining emails within suitable processes, a new, more nuanced, question has arisen: "How do we balance the often conflicting attitudes about the nature and extent of email archiving?" How does an organization actually set about deciding the procedural framework that will drive what emails get retained, how and when they are purged, and how they fit in with the larger array of information managed by that organization?

In order to answer these questions, organizations must honestly evaluate through what "prism" they are primarily viewing email management needs and how various organizational considerations are balanced against each other. In other words, is email management primarily viewed as: 

• An IT issue?
  If so, the primary factor affecting email management decisions is going to be one of storage costs and capabilities; the default is simply storing everything.
  
• A sales, marketing and/or customer service issue?
  Here, the emphasis is on viewing information through a knowledge management prism. Again, the default is on the side of storing as much as possible without overwhelming allotted disk space.
  
• A legal or executive liability issue?
  The emphasis in this instance is on "smart" records management, with a key component being solid processes (filing plans) that contain strategic purging capabilities for documents and email.

Based on their core product line, some vendors' focus has been on "storing everything." However, a reliance on this approach creates what ZyLAB refers to as a "liability vault." Retention itself is not the key to effective email management; in fact, an over-reliance on retaining everything increases the chances that, if audited, "smoking guns" will be found buried in a repository. On the other hand, overcompensating by purging everything that can be legally disposed of can compromise an organization's long-term knowledge management goals.

Creating Real Email Management Solutions
The ideal solution, of course, is one based on balance, of being able to integrate a solution that can address all the factors influencing the development and execution of the overall records management process. Real management of all documents types, especially email, means cost-effective and stable storage that works in tandem with advanced capabilities for searching, retrieving, organizing and transferring information. Due to the changeintensive dynamics of many organizations, a flexible framework is required to alter or expand the solution as needed.

The foundation of flexible solutions is XML-based storage. Unlike database systems, which eventually require conversions and/or upgrades for the long-term storage of terabytes of information, data stored in XML never has to be converted to other formats. Transferring data consists of nothing more than copying it, which makes XML storage ideally suited for long-term, cost-effective email archiving of large volumes of information.

Another essential part of an email solution is a filing plan, which helps manage emails that, based on local regulations and subject matter, must be kept for designated lengths of time. These emails could be project emails that must be kept for the project's duration, personnel emails that must be destroyed when employees leave the company, and so on. A filing plan that combines automatic transfer, retention and purging capabilities dramatically brings down the maintenance cost of large email repositories and limits the outstanding liability because emails can be purged as soon as it is legally viable to do so. Selected emails that do not impose legal risks can, if required, be transferred to a knowledge management repository.