Do you need to kill email?

As the primary way to communicate electronically in most businesses, many of us will receive hundreds of emails a day. This can throw up a number of problems.  It can be difficult to manage the sheer numbers or prioritize important emails.  Mailbox limits can be reached quickly and searching for information in emails takes longer with the more items in your inbox.  It is worth considering how you communicate both inside your business and with supplier, customers and other stakeholders to make sure its still the best for your business.

There are many suggested best practices for sending and managing emails.  Some that include automation (like using outlook rules and spam filters) and others that don’t (like protocols for CCing in colleagues).  Different things work for different people depending on which role they do and what company they work for.

Another solution is to try and move some of the communication to a different app.  There are many that try and offer a different way to communicate and collaborate with colleagues from google docs and office 365 to Slack, Yammer, Workplace (formerly Facebook at Work), Verse, Skype for Business.   And those are just a handful of whats available.

Email is not going away and there are still plenty of important uses, especially as a more formal way of communicating with people outside your company.  For many companies it will remain the best solution for internal communications, but there are now plenty of alternatives to consider.