Escaping the InboxHOW TO STOP EMAIL PROLIFERATION AND INCREASE COMPANY PRODUCTIVITY

A typical Sunday evening question, after one week of vacation:

how many emails will I have in my

inbox tomorrow?

Answer: about 525

Every office worker receives in average 105 emails every day

More revealing data…

4 billion email accounts in 2013

76% personal24% businessBusiness accounts generated

55% of traffic

In absolute values

100 billion emails are sent and received everyday

(that’s 1 million per second)

And the number is growing

Trend of email traffic

2013 2014 2015 2016 2017-6%

-4%

-2%

0%

2%

4%

6%

8%

10%

Personal Business

How email overload affects productivity

Separating the wheat from the chaff (inbox management)

Archives use a lot of IT resources and are difficult to manage

Constant interruptions

How did we get to this?

“Although email was originally designed as a communications

application, it is now being used for additional functions, that it was not

designed for, such as task management and personal archiving.

We call this email overload.”

Lotus Development Corporation, 1996

It’s not email’s fault

Email is:direct & personal

Modern business needs: collaboration & transparency

The solutions so far

Inbox management tools

Email management training

The problem with the old solutions

The number of emails is simply too high

The better solution

Reducing the number of emails

2013 2014 2015 2016 2017-16%

-14%

-12%

-10%

-8%

-6%

-4%

-2%

0%

The traffic trend we should see

Series1

How?

1_By bringing email back to its original purpose

2_By using cloud-based technology to manage tasks

Email vs cloud

Email Cloud task management tools

Private TransparentNo control on inclusion in threads Possibility to join or leave a

projectIndexing is resource-consuming Indexing is a built-in featureDifficult to keep track of past and future steps

Clear outline of Who, What and When

Hard to integrate with other tools Easier to integrate

References:"Email Statistics Report." The Radicati Group. Ed. Sara Radicati. 1 May 2011. Web. 19 Jan. 2015. <http://www.radicati.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Email-Statistics-Report-2011-2015-Executive-Summary.pdf>"Email Statistics Report." The Radicati Group. Ed. Sara Radicati. 2013. <http://www.radicati.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Email-Statistics-Report-2013-2017-Executive-Summary.pdf>.T. Iqbal, Shamsi, and Eric Horvitz. "Disruption and Recovery of Computing Tasks: Field Study, Analysis, and Directions." Microsoft. 2007. <http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/horvitz/chi_2007_iqbal_horvitz.pdf>.J. Mark, Gloria, Stephen Voida, and Armand V. Cardello. "“A Pace Not Dictated by Electrons”: An Empirical Study of Work Without Email." University of California. School of Information and Computer Science, 2012. <http://www.ics.uci.edu/~gmark/Home_page/Research_files/CHI 2012.pdf>.Whittaker, Steve, and Candace Sidner. "Email Overload: Exploring Personal Information Management of Email." Lotus Development Corporation. 1 Jan. 1996. <https://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~i385q/readings/Whittaker_Sidner-1996-Email.pdf>.