Poor e-mail management plagues firms

Firms are failing to effectively manage their e-mail through the poor management of their staff and a lack of effective archiving.

Data archiving firm GFT inboxx surveyed 260 workplace e-mail users and found the following:

• Over 75% of employees receive no guidance on the archiving or retention of business e-mails

• Common compliance and legal guidelines are not being met more than a third of workers have lost and never found important electronic documents

• User habits are putting unnecessary strain on mail-servers and storage capacity - 41% of workers leave files attached to e-mails and just half have an enforced limit on the size of their mailbox

• End-users find archiving complex and laborious and would benefit from a unified approach to archiving

The results, said GFT, indicate that many corporate networks lack structure and control in terms of e-mail use and the storage of electronic documents.

This not only raises questions about the ability of businesses to conform to specific compliance regulations, but also reveals the unnecessary burden that staff are placing on mail servers and storage capacity through the lack of a centralised e-mail policy, GFT said.

"These results suggest organisations are still taking a lax approach to the storage of information and the management of e-mail," said Juergen Oberman, CEO of GFT inboxx.