10 Benefits of Email Filing

For this article, we wanted to look at the ways in which a slick, well-oiled electronic email filing system could offer real benefits to you, your team and your organisation.  We thought of these ten…

1. Improve customer service efficiency.  Whenever any of us phone up a customer service representative we never want to explain ourselves and why we’re calling for the 100th time.  An email filing system puts all customer interactions in a single narrative.  With such a system in place, the representative can simply scroll down and scan the entire email discourse gaining a full picture of what happened prior to taking the call leading to an improved experience for the customer.


2. Find information when people are on holiday.  Email filing is all about getting information into a central location where it can be easily mined.  At this time of year with so many people off on leave for the summer it’s common to “lose” information because it’s buried in someone’s private email silo.  By having a full email filing store and having a strong full-text search capability against that store it’s easier for colleagues to get at important information in a timely manner.


3. Be on top of litigation by being on top of information.  Email filing and email archiving systems are important tools should your organisation end up in litigation for any reason.  Having information to hand on what was and what was not said over email can provide invaluable information to your legal team and help you stay in the driving seat.


4. Reduce costs associated with paper filing.  A lot of organisations, particularly law firms, operate paper-based email filing systems where emails are printed and stored.  This sort of system creates considerable cost, most notably in labour but also in toner, paper and storage costs.  Replacing the manual system with a wholly electronic store brings with it a whole raft of cost savings and other benefits.


5. Make your mail server easier to manage.  Email systems are not designed to store large amounts of information – rather they are designed to channel information from A to B as quickly as possible.  For systems administrators, managing up your email server is a difficult job.  By hiving off emails from the email server to a secure and stable archive managing the server infrastructure becomes easier and cheaper.


6. Comply with your regulatory body’s requirements on email management.  Some industries already have tight controls on how electronic information is supposed to be stored and handled.  (And going forward, industry regulation is almost guaranteed to become tighter in every industry.)  Regulation will always be about keeping good records – a strong email filing solution in your organisation can only support your efforts in this regard.


7. Reduce human error.  Your email filing system can be configured so that everyone works with and files emails in the same way.  By automating the process as far as possible the whole team can be whizzing along, working within the defined guidelines and procedures and making very few errors.  Moreover, when errors do occur (for example someone files an email in the incorrect location) a workflow can be initiated to solve the problem in a reliable and repeatable manner.


8. Makes email filing possible when it once was not.  Suppose you had wanted to create an email filing system but the drag on your teams productivity made it prohibitive to do so?  By using an efficient and powerful email filing system specifically designed to file emails as quickly as possible you now can.


9. Increases ROI of existing storage technology.   Chances are that your email filing systems runs on existing IT infrastructure, and when that infrastructure was put in place a business case would have to have been constructed that justifies the investment.  Your email filing system will contribute to the ROI of that infrastructure.


10. Helps you to get things done.  Here at AMX Software we are big fans of David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” methodology.  (http://www.davidco.com/)  A central premise of his system is by getting everything out of your brain and properly filed you can be more efficient and ultimately productive.  An email filing system is a strong tool to help you do this by giving you a tidy inbox and filing information away in the right place for later use.

The above 10 advantages apply to all email filing systems.  Obviously at AMX Software we would like you to use the one that we develop – Topaz Filer as it satisfies the ten items above and more.  Please contact us if you would like a demonstration.