Checking email is probably the first thing you do in the morning before starting on other work tasks. On some level, you know not to use your inbox to store critical information. But you do it anyway. What’s so convenient in the moment becomes a constant source of stress throughout the day, and you’ll waste valuable time looking through your inbox later.
Your company needs an email management system
Why? According to the Association for Intelligent Information Management’s (AIIM) definition of email management, email is often treated with less concern about security than other types of business documents, and this is a risky mistake.
Some of the reasons AIIM cites for this are:
- The sheer volume of messages involved
- The informality with which emails are written and forwarded: everybody does it, all the time
- The ease with which documents can be attached, even if they’re not supposed to be
Your company needs an email management system
Did you know that Microsoft Outlook and other email programs weren’t intended to handle the avalanche of email you deal with every day? They were designed for communication, not for organized storage, security or quick findability. If you have a tough time finding information you received in an email, you need a document management system that includes an email management component.
With email management, whether you use Outlook or another email system, messages and attachments are stored digitally in a central repository alongside your other business documents. They can also kick off an automated workflow.
Often, email attachments are the only part of an email that requires safekeeping. They contain invoices, receipts, confirmations or other documents that ought to be searchable and protected. Email management allows you to save the body text of an email and its attachments as separate documents, index each of them, put them in the correct folder in your document management system and integrate the attachments into a business process.
For example, when an accounting department receives an email with several invoices attached, the email text and invoices can be stored separately in the document management database. So basically, a well-managed email system means that an invoice approval workflow can be launched as soon as the invoice is stored – no time is wasted!
Lose that crowded inbox. Don’t let it become an obstacle to productivity. Take a minute to explore the capabilities of email management.
With DocuWare Cloud’s email management solution you can:
- Store messages with a mouse click or archive email automatically in DocuWare
- Start a search directly from Outlook or other email clients
- Access document management functionality directly from your email inbox
- Treat email like any other business document to ensure regulatory compliance
- Enhance collaboration by making archived email messages and attachments available to authorized team members
- Improve organization of related content, such as technical specs, customer correspondence or transactional data
- View the email chain from everyone in your company communicating with a customer or supplier
- Mark email that you want to keep in your inbox as filed or remove email messages from your inbox once they’ve been stored in DocuWare
- Delete duplicates and promotional messages according to the parameters you set
It’s time to equip yourself and your team with a cloud email management solution. Find out more by watching the webinar, Get Your Email Handling in Shape with Agile Email Management Software.
Main image: by jean wimmerlin on Unsplash