Email Obesity

According to a recent Radacati Group study (Email Statistics Report, 2009-2013), business users in 2009 received an average of 20 megabytes (MB) of email per day – and that figure is predicted to reach 31 MB per day by 2013. What this means is, if you take that 2009 figure – 20 MB per day – and multiply it by 260 business days, you end up with a figure of 5.2 gigabytes (GB) of email per user per year. But it doesn’t stop there. If your organization has 1,000 employees, this figure is really 5.2 terabytes of email per year!

Radacati also found that users sent and received an average of 167 emails per day. Again, at 260 business days per year, this equates to over 43,000 messages per user per year – all of which you’ll have to search through in legal discovery, without proper email management.

Clearly, email is not trivial – or free. On the contrary, it is a vital business function involving vital business documents that should be addressed in a strategic, professional manner just as you would any other essential business practice. A recent AIIM study on email management (Email Management – The good, the bad and the ugly), shows that email is clearly not receiving the attention from the C-suite that it should.

Respondents confess to an appalling state of affairs, with over half of respondents reporting to be “not confident” or only “slightly confident” that emails related to documenting commitments and obligations made by staff are recorded, complete, and retrievable. To make matters worse, only 10% of organizations have completed an enterprise-wide email management initiative, and 17% have no plans to introduce any email management. This is really too bad, as getting a handle of your email is not rocket science.

Good email management begins with the identification of business-relevant emails and a policy for the classification, storage and destruction of these emails in accordance to, and consistent with, your business standards. From there, establish guiding principles, reduce email glut, decide what to hold, identify roles and responsibilities, automate when possible, and work with a cross-functional team at your organization to address policies and practices.

​Wortzman Nickle can help you realize all the cost and time-saving benefits of defensible email management. Call us for details.