James Robertson has posted another of his CM Briefings, this time on The real cost of email in organisations:
Much has been written about the impact of 'email overload', in terms of the productivity cost and impact on attention spans for staff.
There is another very real cost of the reliance on email: the duplication of information management activities.
The problem is real, as I have seen at clients. Managers send out critical information on email, and everyone is left to figure out whether, where and who to keep that information in their own personal stuff management systems.
The solution? He proposes the elimination of this type of email for central (sensible) storage on the corporate intranet. As he cautions, making this change is not a simple thing. The information on the intranet has to be correct, and it has to be accessible to everyone who might need it.