E-mail: Still a long way to go

E-mail is the killer app that made the Internet what it is today. As a cheaper, more instantaneous and more direct medium of communication, it offered enormous advantages, not only to individual users, but also to organizations, large and small. But, we have not fully leveraged all that e-mail has to offer. More than the individual, it is the organization that can derive huge benefits in both costs and productivity from e-mail. But, to get the full benefits of e-mail, we need to ensure five things. 

First, e-mail should be universally available, all the time. While there still are organizations without the Internet or e-mail connectivity, a sizeable number limit e-mail usage. Limiting its availability to only a few in the organization, or for only a limited time will not deliver the goods. For e-mail to be available all the time to every one, there has to be another enabling factor.

Every one need to be given a PC, connected to a network with Internet access. With the price of both PCs and bandwidth falling, this is not as costly as one might think. Over a three-year period, the cost of hosting services for your e-mail server and bandwidth requirements for a medium-sized organization would work out to less than Rs 5,000 per head per year. A PC per head should cost under Rs 10,000 per head per year. Network infrastructure should cost another Rs 5,000 per year, maximum. In short, e-mail connectivity (not counting other uses of the PC) can be given to every employee at a cost of under Rs 20,000 per head per year.

The second factor is that we need to go beyond simple e-mail and into collaborative messaging and working. The best way to start with this is to set up an intranet, and move some standard paperwork of the organization on the intranet and to e-mail. These could include salary slips, leave applications, circulars, tour sanction and employee claims processing. E-mail in itself is just a beginning. It is only when these systems are automated and when their workflow happens through e-mail that you can be said to be making full use of technology.

The third is effective backups. Only when employees are sure that the backup of their e-mail will be available (communications as well as forms) at all times, will they do away with the paper work. 

The fourth is spam and virus control. Spam has reached epidemic proportions with many people reporting that 95 percent plus of all e-mail that they get every day is spam. Similarly, viruses use e-mail as the preferred mode of transmission, and can bring down your network. Leaving the user to manage both these is a solution that is destined to fail. There has to be centrally administered and regularly updated solutions for these.

The fifth enabling factor is not technology, but management. Management at all levels has to put its weight behind the change over. You can have the best e-mail system possible. But, if the administration department insists on making three hundred photocopies of every circular and sending it to every employee, then you still have a long, long way to go in effectively using technology.

Sounds simple but, most of us are yet to start practicing these. And there lies the problem.

Krishna Kumar