Email: No Longer a Lightweight Communication Tool

I remember the thrill of turning on my computer in the morning and checking to see if I had received any email. For most of us, those early days were exciting and fun, as we discovered a new tool to stay in touch with family and friends, found faster ways to share information with co-workers, and (I say this somewhat grudgingly) lowered the formality of business communication. When I talk to people about their email usage, they all describe a similar history: a few messages a day became a steady stream, which then needed to be stored and organized, and finally turned into a deluge which is now nearly impossible to handle. Today "dealing with email" takes upwards of two hours a day for most professionals, and everyone's excitement has turned into conversations about "coping mechanisms," or worse, bragging about how one simply "deletes everything"!

While finding ways to keep up with email is a good thing, there is another important trend to consider: email is not just a lightweight communication tool anymore. For most businesses, email has become a way we interact with customers and suppliers. The information we delete from our in-boxes represents real, highvalue business information—information that is often not being captured or tracked in any other way. For people and organizations swamped by critical information, throwing messages away is not an answer. Increasingly, knowledge workers and their employers are turning to search as a way to manage the volume and value of information sitting in their in-boxes.

A Growing Problem
Looking for information to get your job done is a regular part of today's workday, and research shows that locating critical information is only getting harder. The amount of time spent finding—as well as analyzing and applying—information is increasing; knowledge workers now spend 11 hours per week searching for information, versus eight in 2001 (Outsell, Inc., "HotTopics: 2001 vs. 2005: Research Study Reveals Dramatic Changes Among Information Consumers," May, 2005).

It's easy to mistake searching for workrelated information with searching on the Internet, but the truth is the information people need the most is behind the firewall, on corporate networks. According to Outsell, 67% of professionals now go to the open Web for information, versus 79% in 2001. Fifteen percent rely on their corporate intranets (up from 5%), and 9% consult their colleagues (up from 5%). In addition, when seeking information, fewer now prefer to get it themselves (51% down from 68%), instead preferring to rely on regularly scheduled updates, members of their team or their library.

There's no question that making search faster and easier will make a difference in your company's productivity, but don't forget all the time saved doing less housekeeping. No more blocking out time at the end of the day to "clear out the in-box," dragging things into folders, re-reading messages to decide if they're worth keeping, printing important memos so you'll have a permanent record, copying phone numbers and email addresses into new contacts. Email search does away with the need to treat email like a flood that you need to control—instead, simply read, respond as needed and move on. For the individual the change is dramatic: more time for high-value projects, instant answers to what used to be research projects and no wondering whether he or she will need a piece of information in the future. Disk space is cheap, but information is the most valuable thing we possess!

Taking Control of Email
Adding search to email is a game changer for people with a lot of important messages. I'm not talking about the slow "animated magnifying glass" search that comes with most popular email programs. I'm talking about instantaneous search— the ability to find a needle in a haystack in a matter of seconds. With great search you can say goodbye to folders, and the countless hours spent dragging messages around, or rooting through folders for a piece of information "you know you have somewhere." Instant search means you don't have to delete messages because they're valuable, not just clutter. Imagine being able to find the resume of that marketing manager you received a year ago, but didn't have a spot for, now that you're ready to hire. Or the message from your customer approving the order that's now in dispute, right at your fingertips. Or last month's sales numbers that your boss is asking about are only a few keystrokes away. With great search, email becomes a high-value database of all the information that has passed across your desk, and the answers that data represents become an integral part of how you do your job—better than before.

Here is how some companies are currently deploying technology for their workers to let them search email quickly and securely, and the benefits they're realizing:

• Improved productivity: Searching for information has become a huge cost of doing business. Knowledge workers now spend 11 hours per week searching for information. For a customer support representative making $30,000 a year, that's a savings of over $8,000 a year, or a lot more customer capacity without adding new people. Anyone who uses email frequently, who interacts with co-workers, customers and suppliers, can use email search to gain back the time spent looking for information, and start putting those cycles to more profitable use.
• Greater visibility: Throughout any organization, employees feel more confident when they have answers. This is evident especially in call-center environments or with workers responding to customer questions on a daily basis. Rather than having to tell a customer that they don't know and resorting to scheduling a follow-up phone call, employees are armed with immediate answers when they use email search. Pat Dillon, an X1 user at EMC Corporation, summarizes it this way: "Suppose I am on the phone with a customer who has a question that I don't have an answer to off the top of my head. I can do a search and appear to be a superhuman tech with all the answers!"