Email is the de facto standard for business communication, but it is far from perfect. Users regard their mailboxes as personal, but then use them to store corporate documents. Simultaneously, thousands of one-line conversational emails get stored, backed up and archived, which puts pressure on IT resources.

Businesses are now aware of the headaches that email can cause and are investigating problem-solving strategies. For example, instant messaging (IM) solutions could offer a solution to the conversational email problem. Widely used in the home market, IM has started to penetrate into the business world.

However, the reaction from business has polarised between those that embrace the technology and those that reject it. Much of the IM technology has not been developed with corporate use in mind. The traffic is not encrypted and it is unrecorded.

Private internal IM solutions can tackle these points and integrate telephony systems so that users can mix audio and on-screen communications with real-time collaboration.

Extending IM into the telephony environment creates a communication tool that is especially attractive to SMEs. Staff can check a colleague’s status or ‘presence’ through the IM window and determine whether it is appropriate to phone them, IM them or send an email. Ad hoc meetings can be held online using voice and text, irrespective of geography. Also, because there is online meeting capability in most IM solutions, staff can share documents.

The other half of the email problem is the use of mail for collaborative working. Documents are produced and mailed to multiple people for review. Consequently, the many responses make it difficult to identify the master version.

Portal technology allows logical groups of users to access a single point and see all of the relevant documentation in a structured way. The final document can be published and access to the document can be carefully managed. Crucially, the document resides in a corporately owned part of the IT system and not in a single mailbox.

Many smaller businesses simply do not have the skills in place to design, deploy and operate a messaging environment that effectively converges email, IM, telephony, voicemail, portals and interactive meetings into one system. The logical solution is to outsource this to a partner that has the multi-faceted skill set already in place.

Simon Ratcliffe is head of managed services at Business Systems Group.