Here is the second post on this topic and a look at the issues from the end-user perspective.  Here is the link to Part 1 that covers the enterprise perspective.  End-users have distinct but related pain regarding electronic communications including:

1.  Managing – too many messages from too many places.  A Harris poll I heard referenced recently said the average user gets over 50 messages per day from 7 different modalities (still looking for that report).  I think this number is actually higher as the "average" employee sends & receives 50 emails per day alone.  Regardless, the overload that comes with all this volume makes merely coping difficult let alone getting ahead of it.

2.  Finding – this is about locating "that message/attachment."  Inboxes/Sent folders are file systems and they hold both correspondence and various versions of file attachments.  Search is huge for the end-user and the ability to rapidly get to something previously written or received is on the top of the list.

3.  Communicating – actually connecting and collaborating with someone electronically.  This is the reason and rationale for all these different technologies in the first place and the end goal.  The ones that are easiest to use and most widely accepted are at the top of the list and email is number one on most (if not all) lists.

4.  Shortcuts – the workarounds and realities of how jobs are performed.  The layers of business rules, authentication, security, etc. in enterprise systems makes them an easy target for a workaround.  Just because the latest sales pipeline information is available in the CRM system does not mean that it has not been exported to an Excel file and is being bounced around via email as "spreadsheetware."  Breaches of rules and regulations occur every day in every company mainly by people using workarounds to get their jobs done.

Having spent a great deal of time in conversations about electronic communications over the years and hearing about the pains, needs, and problems, I thought taking a look at this from the enterprise-level and the end-user perspective would be worthwhile.  This will be a two part post with the first one focused on the enterprise perspective.

Here’s a quick list of what I believe drives the enterprise around electronic communications:

• Threat protection – keeping nasty stuff like viruses and spam out of the network, protecting against intrusion, zombies, hacking, etc.
• Archiving – storing primarily emails in some way other than pst files, Exchange stores, or back-up tapes
• e-Discovery/Retrieval – getting at the stuff you have now saved per above in a way that is fast, efficient, and consistent with a subpoena
• Information security/safeguards – clamping down on both the malicious and non-malicious release of sensitive information via electronic channels
• Access controls – making sure the right people can access sensitive information
• Process controls – ensuring adherence to defined procedures for core business processes (contracts, invoicing, customer care, etc.)
• Audit trails – proving that you have proper controls and oversight in place of your environment – we’ll throw compliance in here as well like NASD 3010-mandated email surveillance
• Operational costs – the money spent on hardware, bandwidth, software, and staff to run all this stuff
• Productivity – making sure that the applications and tools available to the company increase productivity so more can be done with less headcount
• Risk & liability – ensuring that breaches don’t occur, incidents are properly handled, and the "smoking gun" doesn’t happen