by Scott M. Lewis
Electronic mail: We love it, we hate it, we need it, but managing it can be difficult and costly.
One of the biggest issues with email is that we want to keep everything, and we do, several times over. We are saving everything because we have that feeling that someday, for some reason, we might need that email or attachment.
The facts are more interesting. An estimated 246 billion emails are sent every day. The average person gets about 131 emails per day, and the average employee spends 13 hours per week dealing with email. It is estimated that more than 99.2% of saved emails will never be accessed, used or referenced again.
As you can see, a lot of email is processed every day. This is why, in the corporate world, the methodology used to help individuals and organizations manage, store and archive email is such a problem.
What are some of the mistakes made when dealing with email? According to The Muse and Tools and Skills, the top three mistakes people make in the management of their email are:
• Leaving email in the inbox. This is based on a 2011 Princeton study that says if your environment is cluttered, then your brain has a hard time focusing on the tasks at hand. Clutter, even virtual clutter, will negatively affect your ability to process information. It will also make you more irritable, less productive and more likely to be easily distracted by other activities happening around you. The basic recommendation is to clean your house. Clear out the clutter. Make sure you are deleting what needs to be deleted. Develop processes for storing relevant email with other customer information in a central repository for all client or user information. Just get it out of your inbox.
• Delete, archive or file. In many cases what we see are the extremes. People who keep everything including the spam and those who delete everything. There are reasons to keep email, especially in the corporate world, where in some cases litigation or human resource issues can go back years. Handle it in the moment. It doesn’t take much time to think about what to do with a specific email once you have read it. Deal with it or file it. Saving it for later is not productive. It is important to find that healthy balance between corporate importance and junk. Get rid of the junk.
• Using the inbox as a to-do list. Email systems are not designed to be long-term storage. Nor is your inbox designed to be used as your to-do list. This is a time management issue. When you are trying to manage a to-do list inside your mailbox that is constantly changing, your focus wanders from the things you need to get done to what is happening at the moment. This is caused by the clutter of your brain trying to reshuffle the priority list as new things come into your inbox. Separate the to-do list from email so you can stay focused on the important tasks at hand.
How is archiving different from backing up? These are two different functions that require different resources.
A backup is used for operational recoveries. In the event of a deleted file, corrupted database or some other immediate data loss, the data files can quickly be recovered.
Archiving, on the other hand, is long-term storage of files that shouldn’t be changed and are not typically used on a day-to-day basis but are more of a historical record. Archiving is more about the process of searching and sorting data for a specific need. Securing a data archive is critical.
Archiving is meant for files that are not changing from the original. If changes need to be made to an archived document, then a name change or revision number should be required instead of saving over the original document.
When you are talking about the differences between backups and archiving, in many cases it comes down to dollars and cents. Historically, when companies archived they would use some kind of tape storage method. Then they would put that as a permanent record in a safe or underground vault. This methodology did save dollars over continuous backup because after the archiving process, that data was removed and no longer backed up.
With cloud-based storage or electronic data storage in a safe, secure place, the cost of archiving data has gone down drastically. Yet it still allows you access to the files for business requirements or litigation. Keep in mind that even with electronic storage within your own network, drive space is finite, so at some point you will have to add drive space.
Backups versus archiving: There is a difference. Make sure that you are using the right tool for the right reasons and that your email system is not either of these.
Backups are a snapshot of operational or production data at a point in time with a primary focus on files and data recovery in the event of a disaster. Archiving is a long-term storage methodology where customer data, emails, pictures and other information that does not change might need to be referenced at some point because of litigation or other business needs.
There are some great products that can effectively manage these processes for you and provide you with the long-term strategy that will provide your business with safe and secure data.
Scott Lewis is the president and CEO of Winning Technologies Group of Companies, which includes Liberty One Software. Scott has more than 30 years of experience in the technology industry and is a nationally recognized speaker and author. He has worked with businesses to empower them to use technology to improve work processes, increase productivity and reduce costs. Winning Technologies’ goal is to work with companies on the selection, implementation, management and support of technology resources. Learn more about Winning Technologies at www.winningtech.com or by calling 877-379-8279.
Submitted 5 years 208 days ago