Whitepaper • Nearly 14 billion personttoperson email messages were sent daily in North America in 2003, which will increase to over 35 billion in 2005. Worldwide, the total amount may be over 10 trillion for 2005. • As much as 75% of a firm’s total knowledge exchange occurs via email. • Typical knowledge workers spend nearly 50% of their time using email. In Brief Email Management Overview Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems allow users to search more than just shortened file names or message titles: they give users the ability to search deeply into the actual content of text documents, spreadsheets, reports and other common file types including website content, as well as leverage such content across various business units and functions. With the explosion of electronic production of business content, the ECM market in North America has grown aggressively, with over 1,000 software providers claiming they provide solutions to the burgeoning market. According to the research firm IDC, the market for these systems has grown from $1.4 billion in 2001, to over $3 billion in 2004 and will expand to $4.6 billion or more by 2006. Often, disparate content stored in separate repositories has made it difficult to search across an enterprise for related information. Surveys during the past two years have consistently shown that the leading reason for purchasing content management software has been to unify information access. Organizations are looking for ways to reduce the complexity of enterprise applications for end users by integrating applications and information to achieve a single point of access to multiple information sources, streamline internal business processes, and create a unified view of enterprise information. The ECM market is starting to absorb some of the email archiving market, according to Forrester Research. As such, of the key segments in the ECM market, managing email is the fastest-growing and most challenging segment. According to IDC, nearly 14 billion person-to-person email messages were sent daily in North America in 2003, which will increase to over 35 billion in 2005. Worldwide, the total amount may be over 10 trillion for 2005. Email has become the de facto standard for business communication. In fact, according to Gartner Group, as much as 75% of a firm’s total knowledge exchange occurs via email and META Group maintains that typical knowledge workers spend nearly 50% of their time using email. Email often includes key information that reveals the characteristics of real day-to-day operations and business processes, and thus systems that manage email according to business rules and policies are in great demand. Regulatory and legislative pressures, including the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and HIPAA, combined with aggressive prosecution of corporate executives by the government and increased demand for electronic discovery during litigations, have heightened the need for content management systems to adhere to compliance requirements. Managing email as part of a comprehensive, compliant ECM system is a critical aspect of compliance as well. Many software providers maintain that managing email is a simple task of executing a file plan based on aging of files to archive and move email documents across various media types. As such, emails are logged and stored outside the email server in a separate repository. This storage-centric approach, however, does not allow for a unified search across document types related to the target topic, does not address A Storage or Enterprise Content Management Issue?more critical content-related issues, and provides limited opportunity to leverage the strategic benefits of integrating email into business processes. This White Paper explores the requirements for effective email management that minimize risk and cost while maximizing access to information. A content-centric vs. storage-centric approach is evaluated. This paper will argue that email management systems based on enterprise content management (ECM) principles will supersede systems based strictly on storage requirements only, since ECM-based solutions provide benefits and returns above and beyond what storage-centric systems provide. Enterprise Content Management Benefits ECM systems allow for the addition, classification, management, and search and retrieval of all types of content in an organization including email, documents, spreadsheets, reports and other common file types. They also permit updating and distribution of all types of content on an organization’s websites, whether external or internal (intranets). Overall, ECM systems generally move control away from the central IT department and under the control of users or distributed application support personnel. This means that the use of ECM systems becomes more finely tailored to user needs on a more immediate basis – cutting out any miscommunication or delays between users and the IT department. ECM systems allow non-IT users to easily find any type of organizational content by keywords, business rules, content searches or even conceptual searches. The key benefits of ECM systems are to reduce the time for users to add, manage search and retrieve organizational content for daily business processes, to more easily determine optimum patterns for Best Practices reviews, and to enable knowledge sharing among departmental and enterprise users in a secure fashion – a mix of benefits that pure storage or archive solutions can’t offer. When integrated with Records Management (RM) systems, ECM solutions can provide corporate legal departments and compliance auditors the ability to set records retention and disposition policies and to enforce and monitor these records electronically. This improves compliance and reduces organizational exposure to risk from regulatory and litigation pressures. Email Management Trends The ECM market is starting to absorb some of the email archiving market, according to Forrester Research. By 2008, an estimated 41% of the message archiving market will be owned in part by ECM vendors that offer RM solutions with integrated message archiving capabilities and store all records in an ECM universal repository. Of all the ECM system components, email messaging is by far the fastest growing segment. By the end of 2004, the message archiving market is projected to be more than double the size of the RM market. The message archiving segment will also be the most difficult to classify and manage, due to email’s ubiquity and changing nature. According to research by AIIM International, 93% of organizations reported using email for customer service inquiries and more than 80% use email to discuss strategy or for filing electronic compliance responses. Employees not only use email to communicate, but also as a workflow tool to track decisions, request approvals or edit documents – which means that decisions, official memoranda and other valuable Email Management2 Key Benefits of ECM • Reduce the time for users to add, manage search and retrieve organizational content • Easily determine optimum patterns for Best Practices reviews • Enable knowledge sharing among departmental and enterprise users in a secure fashion Whitepaperrecords are often encapsulated in the context of email exchanges. When replying to and forwarding email, topics evolve and change and may be completely different by the end of a number of email exchanges (threads). This is one mitigating factor that complicates the classification and archiving of email messages by subject line, and certainly by date. Retrieving messages based on their actual content solves this difficulty. It has been estimated that as much as 45% of business critical information is stored within corporate messaging systems. Yet nowhere else is there more unmanaged content than in corporate email systems. Today, email is a crucial element of business communication that can compromise an organization’s future prosperity, if not properly managed. The speed and dexterity of email has its obvious advantages as a communication tool but also comes with its share of problems. The sizes of user mailboxes are typically limited by the IT department so users often need to move messages from their inbox to other locations such as private email folders, public folders, network drives and document management systems so that important messages can be archived. Although organizations have increasingly implemented policies for email retention and storage, these policies are not followed by over 40% of users. This results in a haphazard approach that makes search and retrieval across the enterprise cumbersome and complex, if not impossible. As a result, overall organizational productivity is affected as end users; IT departments and records managers struggle to recover these messages when the need arises. This is particularly problematic during time-dependent litigation and audit requests. A Compliance Environment With the rise of regulatory pressures, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and Healthcare Information Portability & Accountability Act (HIPAA), and increasingly aggressive monitoring by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and other governmental agencies, records management (RM) has risen to importance from corporate back rooms to the boardrooms. More and more ECM vendors have recognized the importance of integrating ECM systems that offer advanced email management capabilities, with RM systems in order to provide compliance solutions for organizations. Canadian and Australian firms led the world in leveraging RM capabilities in ECM systems in the late 1990s. In the U.S., ECM system providers have moved rapidly since the 2001-2002 timeframe to incorporate the U.S. DoD 5015.2 records management standard within their software. Records management as applied to email has become essential for most if not all organizations, a fact vibrantly illustrated by the levying of heavy fines against five major corporations in late 2002 by the U.S. government and the resultant compliance environment. Enterprises need to recognize the importance of recasting email as a formal corporate record, and of managing such messages appropriately. As such, some specialty vendors have provided point solutions to mitigate the immediate risks and liabilities associated with capture and storage of email specifically to address regulatory compliance requirements. These are viable in the short term, but in the long run, these solutions only add to the burden, cost and risk associated with managing multiple systems. Email Management3 It has been estimated that as much as 45% of business critical information is stored within corporate messaging systems. Yet nowhere else is there more unmanaged content than in corporate email systems. Today, email is a crucial element of business communication that can compromise an organization’s future prosperity, if not properly managed. The speed and dexterity of email has its obvious advantages as a communication tool but also comes with its share of problems. WhitepaperEmail Management by Storage – A Partial Solution Today, organizations primarily store email messages on a central email server. As users check their email, the messages may be transferred to the user’s computer, or may remain on the server’s drives. Periodically, the email server is backed up, either to tape, optical drive, another magnetic disk, or a combination of these devices. Users may also save individual emails onto their hard drives or into an archive file of some sort. These procedures are often the only ones that many organizations adhere to when dealing with long-term storage of email messages. For the organization that manages email messages as records – as stated earlier, a rapidly increasing trend – some of these messages may be declared records and then physically moved to another system, such as an email archival application, an electronic records management system, or an electronic document management system. From these systems, email messages in turn, are usually stored on magnetic disk or optical media and may also be backed up to tape. Besides the obvious maintenance costs, this separation of email records into a distinct repository has made it even more difficult to not only search for related information across the enterprise but to ensure that the integrity of the information has also been maintained. This is especially true when email messages are essential to the integral business processes and data held in application systems such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems or Enterprise Resource Management (ERP) systems. Storage Options The first and longest-running option is paper—many organizations still file email as records by printing them out and filing them in the appropriate folder. Organizations are moving away from this option as email volumes and increasing costs related to physical storage and manual filing and retrieval skyrocket. Furthermore, courts are increasingly finding it insufficient for proper record keeping. Perhaps the best-known example of this is the “PROFS Case,” where the courts held that printed emails did not provide sufficient information because some metadata was not provided. Even where a printed document is available, courts may require production of the information in its native format, in this case, in electronic message form. Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) schemas migrate documents between media types to optimize retrieval and improve price/performance ratios. HSM combined with a file plan provides for the movement of copies of emails and email threads across media types according to organizational policies on the aging of documents. This reduces organizational legal risk by providing for the preservation, archiving and then destruction of email messages after a set period (for example, three to seven years for some regulatory requirements). This approach also improves auditability as it assists auditors in locating records based on creation date. The HSM concept means that documents are stored on magnetic media during the period of highest retrieval activity. As the (email) documents become less active, the output data is migrated to the next level of the hierarchy – optical disk libraries (5.25 inch or DVDs) in jukeboxes. In very large-scale systems, documents are frequently migrated to automated half-inch magnetic tape cartridge libraries. Check images and high-volume email are particularly good candidates for magnetic tape libraries. This option has been limited due to the very few vendors that offer software for implementing this technology and the slow speed of access. Email Management4 What is not addressed with a storage-centric approach is the integration with underlying business processes that email messages become a part of in the normal course of business operations. In fact, separating email into its own distinct storage repository is contrary to maintaining the integrity of the actual business processes and associated emails, and creates obstacles for users in conducting operational research and searching for Best Practices sequences. WhitepaperFundamental to a storage-centric archiving approach is the basic premise that documents are stored according to age, not their actual content. Historically, this rudimentary approach has served organizations well for storing of reports, scanned documents and text documents. However, with today’s explosion in email message volumes, and legal and regulatory pressures, this approach is only one component of a comprehensive email management system. What is not addressed with a storage-centric approach is the integration with underlying business processes that email messages become a part of in the normal course of business operations. In fact, separating email into its own distinct storage repository is contrary to maintaining the integrity of the actual business processes and associated emails, and creates obstacles for users in conducting operational research and searching for Best Practices sequences. Further, it complicates the process and elongates the time for organizations to adequately respond to discovery requests, and brings into question the validity and integrity of the data existing on a specified topic. Furthermore, point solutions offered by email archiving specialist vendors which focus on the storage aspects of managing email fall short since such systems too often reside outside of a comprehensive ECM framework. Email has become critical business content for organizations, and as such, an email management strategy should be fully integrated into an organization’s overall ECM strategy. Applying Content Management Principles to Email Users may need access to email messages shortly after they have been archived or perhaps months later. Auditors and legal professionals may need access years later. When any of these user groups seek to collect information that involves email, they often will require access to the actual application data and sequence of business processes undertaken to get a complete picture of the interchange of communication and processes that lead up to the conclusion of a transaction, project or specific decision. In order to get this view – and to be assured of the integrity of the entire collection of email, application data and document types – users need to be able to search for content not only based on email properties such as ‘Date,’ ‘To,’ ‘From,’ ‘CC/BCC,’ and ‘Subject,’ but also, due to the evolving nature of email threads, on the actual content buried deep inside a sequence of emails. Users require searching not only on keywords and complete content of email, but also on any attachments that are normally a part of email exchanges. Without this, users would need to search each and every attachment manually, and this is provided that they can locate the proper attachments based on searching through the basic email properties. Attachments often contain important proposals, reports – and even contracts – which must be indexed fully for easy retrieval. For instance, searching attachments and their content is particularly crucial when there is change or turnover of project managers or project team participants who must ‘get up to speed’ on a project very quickly and need an objective view of what has transpired. Furthermore, attachments are often far more valuable when associated with their original email messages, which provide insight into the business context and processes in which the attachment originated. Email Management5 Users require searching not only on keywords and complete content of email, but also on any attachments that are normally a part of email exchanges. Without this, users would need to search each and every attachment manually, and this is provided that they can locate the proper attachments based on searching through the basic email properties. WhitepaperStoring email messages and their attachments in an ECM system alongside other corporate content gives users the ability to search through those email messages and attachments, along with all associated and relevant content. It also saves valuable knowledge worker time, ensures accurate and complete retrieval since there is only one comprehensive search to worry about, and allows the organization as a whole to focus less on tactical and disparate systems. An Optimum Email Management Solution Recognizing that email is bona fide corporate content and should be managed as part of an organization’s overall ECM strategy, it should also be noted that ECM systems do in fact address the email storage issue. ECM-based email management systems offer, however, more than just an answer to email storage. An efficient email management system lets users operate in a standardized way and becomes simply a part of the background of daily operations. Users need the reliability of a standardized system, but also the flexibility to intervene and manually file away email messages if special requirements dictate as such. They must know that the information they need is reliably at hand and will be available whether for informational, audit or legal purposes. This means an email management system must provide transparent operation where users may rely on preconfigured search templates or standard search tools, but they are not forced to use a system that is so rigid as to not allow for the option of storing email content in a customized way, under their own project-specific taxonomy. “Email management systems should operate as easily and consistently as email itself. Beyond that, they should be able to integrate into ECM and RM systems seamlessly to support and document business processes,” states Jesse Wilkins, Principal with IMERGE Consulting’s Email Management Practice and AIIM International Board member. From a Return on Investment (ROI) perspective, storage-centric email management providers are adequate, and they can declare emails as records for compliance purposes, but the distinction comes when searches and retrievals must be made. At that time, the differences between a storage-centric approach and a more comprehensive ECM approach become apparent. It simply takes longer—and therefore costs more—to reconstruct the complete sequence of business processes and the integration with the applications they are necessarily a part of. On the whole, when comparing storage-versus ECM-based email management, a storage-centric approach misses the opportunity to leverage email content in business processes to gain efficiencies and enhance productivity. After all, email was intended from the beginning to be a productivity tool, not a trail for regulators to follow. An ECM-based email management system includes all the compliance and records management support that storage-based systems offer, as well as the added benefits of consolidated corporate content and the opportunity to leverage such content across different business functions. Such systems also offer a platform for higher-level pursuits such as harvesting information to better service customers and promoting knowledge sharing across the organization. Overall, the best email management system is fully integrated into an organization’s total ECM strategy, minimizing email storage administration and costs while contributing to employee productivity and enhancing business processes. Email Management6 “Email management systems should operate as easily and consistently as email itself. Beyond that, they should be able to integrate into ECM and RM systems seamlessly to support and document business processes,” states Jesse Wilkins, Principal with IMERGE Consulting’s Email Management Practice and AIIM International Board member. WhitepaperFileNet Email Manager FileNet Email Manager allows organizations with large numbers of email users to effectively manage email content for improved business decision-making and adherence to regulatory compliance requirements FileNet Email Manager is a server-based email management solution that is designed to integrate with popular corporate email systems like Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes mail servers and desktop applications such as Microsoft Office. The key differentiator for FileNet Email Manager is the ability to use captured email content to initiate and play a significant role in business processes. FileNet Email Manager allows organizations to manage email content as a part of a comprehensive Enterprise Content Management infrastructure. In addition, FileNet Email Manager simplifies and automates the process of capturing email messages as business records to support proof of compliance as well as easy storage and retrieval of email messages. FileNet Email Manager is the industry’s only intelligent email management solution that is: • Seamlessly integrated: Leverages FileNet’s industry leading ECM solutions, including out-of-the-box integration with FileNet P8 • Automated: Selectively captures email messages based on the value of the content and automates the entire email lifecycle. • Enforced: Alleviates burden from end-users and systems administrators by invisibly enforcing consistent compliance and email policies throughout the enterprise. Email Management FileNet Corporation 3565 Harbor Boulevard, Costa Mesa, CA, USA 92626-1420 www.filenet.com Phone: 800.FileNet (345.3638) Outside the U.S. call 714.327.4800 0505 7 Whitepaper About FileNet FileNet Corporation helps organizations make better decisions faster by managing the content and processes that drive their business. FileNet’s Enterprise Content and Business Process Management solutions allow customers to build and sustain competitive advantage by managing content throughout their organizations, automating and streamlining their business processes, and providing a spectrum of connectivity needed to simplify their critical and everyday decision-making. FileNet solutions deliver a broad set of capabilities that integrate with existing information systems to provide cost-effective solutions that solve realwoorl business problems. Since the Company’s founding in 1982, more than 4,000 organizations, including more than three quarters of the Fortune 100, have taken advantage of FileNet solutions for help in managing their mission-critical content and processes. Headquartered in Costa Mesa, Calif., the Company markets its innovative ECM solutions in more than 90 countries through its own global sales, professional services and support organizations, as well as via its ValueNet® Partner network of resellers, system integrators and application developers.