There's life in the old dog yet: Three reasons why e-mail is not dying out
The world of work is in a constant state of flux as a result of the digitalization of work processes. In particular, the concept of the office, where employees come together every day to do their work, is being put to the test. Cross-location collaboration between employees in different departments or within a team is becoming increasingly important. What is more suitable for communication: a collaboration tool or good old e-mail?
Flexible working models with individual work scheduling in the home office and mobile devices are on the rise. The choice of digital collaboration tools for exchanging information is also growing: Slack, a web-based instant messaging service from the U.S. company Slack Technologies for communication within work groups, Wrike (a project management software) or Honey, a kind of "social intranet" for companies, are just a few examples. At first glance, these offer ideal solutions for networking employees. However, the benefits of classic e-mail for communication between employees, with customers and interested parties should not be underestimated, as providers of e-mail programs state. Essentially, three reasons still speak for the good old electronic mailbox:
The e-mail lives
According to a report by the US market research institute Radicati Group on the worldwide use of e-mail around 3.7 billion people write and receive 269 billion e-mails every day. In this context, the researchers recognize a clear increase in e-mail communication: the number of e-mail accounts will climb by 22 percent from 6.32 billion in 2017 to 7.71 billion in 2021. The explanation is simple: email communication is not only intuitive, it is also the only solution that allows you to reach everyone - that means external contacts as well - be it business partners, public authorities or private contacts. E-mail also makes it much easier and more secure to send and distribute documents, especially those containing sensitive information. In addition, people need e-mail addresses to order things online, sign up for services or register to attend events.
Flood of emails through collaboration tools
One problem with chats and collaboration tools is that they are proprietary solutions that are incompatible with each other. For example, if a company switches its main communication to collaboration tools, it will have to use a myriad of solutions to stay in touch with all of its customers. In addition to this being impractical, there is a tendency for many of the major providers of these services to lock users into their own tools. A primary focus of collaboration tools is to simplify communication. However, using the services actually increases the number of emails in the inbox, as the tools usually generate additional emails. If we look at the area of marketing, this also thrives on communication via e-mail, since relevant people can be reached in a targeted manner.
Who is reading along? Communicate securely
As we all know, the new EU General Data Protection Regulation will come into force at the end of May 2018, which means that the rules for data storage will become stricter for companies. If we take the archiving of messages as an example, this too is more secure via the archive of an email inbox compared to message storage in collaboration tools, which often runs via US servers. It is therefore recommended to use a secure email client. For example, eM Client uses PGP encryption technology. This is also used for Google e-mails: all e-mails sent by the client are encrypted by the client itself, so that the Google server already receives them encrypted - the e-mails are also encrypted via the Internet provider.
Source and more information about the mentioned email solution: www.emclient.com
