Increasing numbers of companies are including email systems in their Enterprise Content Management.
Eisenach/Karlsruhe, 5 May 2010 – The current ECM (Enterprise Content Management) Survey conducted by the Business Application Research Centre (BARC) has revealed that ECM solutions are being seen as increasingly valuable in the business world. Of the companies surveyed, 39% already use ECM solutions. Another 48% are currently in the process of evaluation and selection. The survey also shows that email management is an important aspect in this choice: 85% of the companies surveyed categorise the integration of the ECM system in their email system as important or very important.
"In almost every company, email communication is pivotal for the fast exchange of business-critical content," says Stefan Strobel, Head of Business Unit Email at GROUP Business Software AG explaining the findings of the study: "An efficient email management system coupled with an intelligent archiving system for electronic business correspondence has become an essential element of Enterprise Content Management."
Up to now, ECM has frequently focussed purely on email archiving. However, there is now a trend emerging whereby companies are taking a more integrated view of the email medium and are involving their employees in an appropriate email management concept. "This is a welcome development, because email in modern companies should not be viewed in isolation but instead employees should be supported with software solutions," confirms BARC analyst Maximilian Gantner.
Another survey conducted by his research centre supports the view that email management is becoming very important: Although 65% of the companies surveyed said that currently they were not using a specific solution for email management, most of them were already busy planning to use one.
iQ.Suite, which is supplied by the Email, Archiving and Administration Division at GROUP Business Software AG is a comprehensive and easy to administrate total solution for email management suitable for any company, irrespective of its size. It brings together all the solution components required to guarantee the availability of content transmitted by email as part of every business process but also takes into consideration productivity, data protection, legal requirements and computer system security.
From an efficient, completely automated filing system through keyword indexing and tamper protection to load reduction on servers, iQ.Suite meets all the requirements of ECM in email management. "At the end of the day, these studies show us that aspects such as faster event processing, load reduction on the technical infrastructure and better access to information for the employees must be considered now and tomorrow as the drivers for email management projects. This is made particularly clear by the way companies are becoming increasingly process-orineted, particularly where email management is concerned," comments Strobel.
Where no email management system is used, it is often the case that most of the information is held in individual employees' mail boxes, where it is of very little use. "Particularly for jointly run projects or where there is wide interest in a subject, it is necessary to have a structured store of valuable information and particularly to ensure that it is correctly assigned to projects or processes. It is very important that email is included in the information management systems of modern companies," says Gantner. That is why it is so crucial to cut down on the build-up of information in individual employees' mail boxes and to bring the information together in a central location.
iQ.Suite supports its users directly as they work together, which is one of the main requirements of Enterprise Content Management. Stefan Strobel outlines one of the many application scenarios in which Enterprise Content Management integrates with the email management system in iQ.Suite: "For example, the centrally controlled absence management system ensures that important content and documents that are sent by email are not left unacknowledged even when employees are not at work, but are automatically sent to authorised colleagues to be dealt with." The email experts also see other aspects of email security and data protection as further fields of action. Virus and spam protection, exclusion of liability and encryption are also included as important aspects of integrated email management.
*This study is available at www.barc.de for download free of charge.
For more information, please go to www.www.barc.de
