Are You on an Email Island?
Traditional email programs that are disconnected from everything are still the centerpiece of many a businesses’ communications. Each staff member has their own Outlook or Mac Mail or Thunderbird pulling email down from a server somewhere and storing all of their own email, contact information, company directory and calendar.
Everyone is on an email island.
Staff members have their own internal ecosystem (emails related to people related to appointments related to tasks), but there is only one way information comes in our out: through an email.
Usually staff members are also managing a separate “phone island” with contact phone numbers and voicemails completely disconnected from their email.
This is a fractured and frustrating setup.
Every person is managing two (phone and email) critical but separate communication islands. And those islands are separate from everyone else in the company as well.
There is a better way: moving email and phones from islands into a communication hub.
Here’s what I mean:
In transportation, a hub allows shipments to come in through a variety of channels-train, plane, boat, semi-then collects all that stuff in one place and sends it back out in whatever way is best. In a similar way, technology allows communication coming in through a variety of channels-emails, phone calls, contact data, calendar invitations, voicemails-to be gathered into a single place and networked together. Instead of managing many separate islands, your staff is managing a single hub.
A communication hub combines email, instant messaging, shared contact lists, shared calendars, company directories and phones in a single place. Imagine:
- Phones pull contact information with your email account.
- Instant messaging conversations are stored in your email folders.
- Voicemails left at your office phone are delivered as sound files to your email, which you can then listen to on your mobile phone.
- The company directory is automatically populated in every email account, phone and mobile phone.
- Clicking on a phone number in your address book dials the number on your phone. Free and busy are visible for others to see, so scheduling becomes a breeze.
- Inbound phone calls pull up customer information based on caller ID.
You get the idea.
At Highland, we use Zimbra as the backbone of our own communications hub.
These tools can increase productivity and reduce operating costs, and the cost to deploy and maintain them are actually decreasing because of hosted models and a competitive market.
What do you think? Any experience moving from email islands to unified communication hubs? Share your comments below.
