A New Frontier?

I remember attending a conference session a while ago thatdiscussed the challenges facing IT. One CIO brought up e-mail as amajor issue, a thought vigorously agreed to by several attendees.However, that's where the discussion ended–the questions lingeredwithout any ready solutions, maybe because the problem is thatcomplex.

A big challenge for insurers used to be paper glut. Nowadays wehear less about that likely due to advancements in relatedtechnologies. But has this advancement created a new Wild West ofsorts–a world of e-mail with few, if any, rules?

The concerns are many. For example, what should be kept ordeleted? While there are solutions to help in the sorting, how muchis too much to keep (which leads to questions regarding storagecosts)? Another issue is the growing volume and how much time anemployee spends each day on sifting and responding.

In late 2006, AIIM, the enterprise content managementassociation, released a study of more than 1,000 end users, called"E-mail Management: An Oxymoron?" It found while most organizationsmake heavy use of the tool, they "continue to have a very casualattitude toward its management." AIIM's president, John F. Mancini,summed up the problem in a press release at the time: "There aremajor costs associated with simply providing the storage (hardware,software, and people) necessary to managing increasing volumes ofunmanaged e-mail. Secondly, unmanaged e-mail represents a drag onkey processes and forces organizations to resort to manual ratherthan automated processes. Most importantly–and reflected in manysensational press stories–unmanaged e-mail creates significantlitigation and e-discovery risks."

Several of the key results are telling: "More than one in threeend users (35 percent) report they have 'not yet begun' to addresssuch core e-mail management issues as archiving, life cyclemanagement, retention, and disposition. Another 41 percent indicatethey have begun to address e-mail management, but 'much remains tobe done.' . . . Only 44 percent of those surveyed indicate thatthey have a policy or strategy toward e-mail retention in theirorganization."

According to the study, larger organizations report being inbetter shape than smaller ones. However, regardless of size, whiletechnology can supply some of the answers, a lot may depend on thehuman factor. The biggest challenge may turn out to be old habitsare hard to break. I could go on, but I need to check on all thee-mail that's piled up while I was writing this note.

P.S. New this month: "Agent Relations," a look at the dealingsbetween carriers and independent agents (and other industryplayers) from our contributing editor Ara Trembly.