Email slated as collaboration tool

Moving to instant messaging would save a huge amount of money, claims analyst

Rachel Fielding, vnunet.com 01 Sep 2003

Email has become a burden and an ineffective information management tool, with most companies wasting a disproportionate amount of time and money on it, analyst Butler Group has warned.

Although organisations recognise the business benefits of allowing staff to collaborate effectively using technology, too many see email as the answer to all their problems. And the reality of the situation is that email simply does not measure up to the job.

Ian Charlesworth, senior research analyst and co-author of the report, told vnunet.com: "People are already collaborating like mad using email. We don't need to collaborate more but we need to do it more effectively.

"The message needs to move away from email to more relevant collaboration tools. Currently there's no presence awareness built into email apart from [the] 'out of office' message.

"Instant messaging [IM] is far more cost-effective to manage. Just moving a small proportion of collaboration to IM would save a huge amount of money."

But budget pressures also mean that companies no longer want a series of disparate and standalone products for messaging, file and document exchange, virtual workspaces, conferencing and presence detection and awareness.

"People are put off because they're not interested in buying new products and they want to make the most of the investments they have," Charlesworth added. But he warned that such a strategy was a false economy.

At the same time, increased regulation is good news for vendors of collaboration tools vendors, who no longer need to hype a market to generate interest.

"The risk of legal exposure from failure to comply is such a compelling force that it can even force Return on Investment onto a back burner," said the report.

Last month, a report claimed that UK investment banks could be putting themselves, and investors, at risk by allowing employees to use unregulated instant messaging networks to exchange business and financial information.

Around half of companies in the UK investment community admit that the use of IM networks is widespread within their organisations and that important transactions are being made via free IM networks, the study from researcher Vanson Bourne reported.

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