Moving to Microsoft 365 can be a complex challenge. There is countless advice available on how to plan and execute a move technically but very little to explain how to clean up your email stores (Inboxes, PST’s, Public Folders, etc.) to ensure your users get the best possible user experience after the move to Microsoft 365 and that you keep control of the ongoing associated cost of storage. Scattered and unstructured data significantly increases the likelihood of increasing the email management cost when moving to Microsoft 365.

Typically email is distributed in a large number of email silos which can include user Inboxes, departments emails stores, PST files, old email from staff who have left, Public Folders, etc. In addition, user inboxes can dramatically differ is size and structure particularly when using Outlook Folders. If an email management problem is migrated to 365 it will only become a bigger problem with increased costs.

At a high level the transition can be broken into a number of different areas:

• Planning the best approach for your organisation  – probably the most important stage of the project
• Removing email duplication – this can save a huge amount of space and therefore cost
• Deleting unnecessary emails from users inboxes and other email data stores – the challenge here is agreeing an approach with the business users which can include changing the mindset of keeping everything ‘just in case’
• Creating a well-organised central email database – this will make the move to 365 as trouble-free as possible.

Knowledgemill provides an intelligent machine learning email filing system that works seamlessly as part of Office 365 or on premise Exchange and will make your move to Microsoft 365 as effortless as possible. It can be used to create a single set of email data that is ready to move to Microsoft 365 by ingesting all emails from current sources, remove duplication, deleting unwanted emails automatically based on your organisation’s data policies and ensuring all company data retention and security rules are respected.

At Knowledgemill we have been working with many organisations to solve their operational email management problems, Legal firms, construction firms, accounting firms or professional services organisations. Please click on the link www.knowledgemill.com to find out more.  I would be pleased to demonstrate/discuss how Knowledgemill can help your business, explain the system in more detail and show how Knowledgemill could help your organisation. 

Kevin has been successfully delivering technology solutions to companies for over 30 years both on the buying and selling side of a number of blue chip organisations, e.g. with Deloitte or as a CIO/COO.

Outlook Public Folders are an outdated and underpowered tool that may cause a number of organisational challenges and poor performance when moving to Office 365 or as the number of users increases. With only manual filing available there is sole dependency on the diligence / compliance of the individual users filing every email. Rather than saving time, time is wasted as it is more difficult to find information and with no de-duplication or compression of emails there is no saving on storage space. 

A further major challenge which cannot be solved by Public Folders is the need for emails and documents to be available in real-time to support each area of the organisation. The information embedded in emails and documents needs to be at hand to support the business Sales, Customer Service, Risk, Compliance, suppliers, etc. This is not fully possible when using Public Folders.

Knowledgemill provides an intelligent machine learning email filing system that works seamlessly as part of Microsoft Outlook (Office 365 or Exchange) and integrates with the document management system of your choice or the native Knowledgemill DMS.  It also provides a full filing capability for iPhones, iPads and Android phones and provides a well proven migration path from Public Folders to Knowledgemill. Knowledgemill can also be used to provide one quick single powerful search across emails and documents.

At Knowledgemill we have been working with many organisations to solve their operational email management problems, Legal firms, construction firms, accounting firms or professional services organisations. Please click on the link www.knowledgemill.com to find out more.  I would be pleased to demonstrate/discuss how Knowledgemill can help your business, explain the system in more detail and show how Knowledgemill could help your organisation. 

Kevin has been successfully delivering technology solutions to companies for over 30 years both on the buying and selling side of a number of blue chip organisations, e.g. with Deloitte or as a CIO/COO.

Many businesses have a culture of operating in email silos with emails only accessible by one staff member’s Inbox or one department. This email isolation from the rest of the organisation can cause many issues for the organisation.

Working in email silos threatens the accuracy of your data and increases organisational risk. Scattered and unstructured data increases the chance of using out-of-date or incorrect information. An incomplete view of the business in this way can mean management decision-making becomes harder or increases the risk of poor decision-making. Outward facing, it can easily lead to bad client experience because of the difficulty establishing the full picture when communicating with them.

Silo working also slows the pace of the organisation with everything taking longer. It creates a less collaborative environment and it is very hard to find the right information quickly, resulting in an enormous amount of time wasted searching and retrieving information embedded in emails. A lack of up to date technology across the organisation can also prohibit email data passing easily between departments or staff. Companies need high quality applications that can handle quick transfer of information.

Company growth itself can be restrained because of the over complexity of maintaining all the email data silos, together with maintaining those silos when staff leave.  An organisation can end up adding more and more staff to manage the consequence of data silos instead of being able to focus on growing the organisation.   A significant amount of storage space is wasted through duplication this can be as much as 90% wasted email data space.

Adopting Knowledgemill Email Manager can solve all these issues. Knowledgemill removes email silos to create a single centrally managed database of emails. By migrating all emails from all silos (and removing duplications) to the central database this can then be linked to all email Inboxes and kept up-to-date in real time.

Knowledgemill provides an intelligent machine learning email filing system that works seamlessly as part of Microsoft Outlook (Office 365 or Exchange) and integrates with the document management system of your choice or the native Knowledgemill DMS.  It also provides a full filing capability for iPhones, iPads and Android phones.

At Knowledgemill we have been working with many organisations to solve their operational email management problems, Legal firms, construction firms, accounting firms or professional services organisations. Please click on the link www.knowledgemill.com to find out more.  I would be pleased to demonstrate/discuss how Knowledgemill can help your business, explain the system in more detail and show how Knowledgemill could help your organisation. 

Kevin has been successfully delivering technology solutions to companies for over 30 years both on the buying and selling side of a number of blue chip organisations, e.g. with Deloitte or as a CIO/COO.

Let’s be honest, a lack of user discipline when filing or storing emails costs organisations a huge amount of money and can put the company at significant risk. Relying solely on our colleagues to have good email filing discipline, ensuring that all relevant business is filed diligently can have serious repercussions for the company. 

Our colleagues may not invoice our customers fully, or we may waste a lot of time trying to find information embedded in emails, and we could even risk regulatory fines or be unable to defend litigation. A poor email filing discipline or everything stored in individual staff email Inboxes, where you don’t have access to the information, is very frustrating. Consider the following:

• Client Service – with critical data being spread across numerous individual mailboxes, how quickly can you establish the full and most up-to-date position?  This challenge is made even greater when members of staff leave.
• Productivity – have you ever sat down and thought about how much time is wasted trying to search and find emails?
• Risk – having data scattered across multiple mailboxes not only makes it much harder to search and find information but also increases the chances of using out-of-date or incorrect information.
• Staff Morale – with staff being copied in to all emails relating to a particular client or job, whether the email is relevant to them or not, they run the risk of email overload.  Typically they either waste time by having to read every single email or they start skipping emails, leaving them left unopened, which increases the risk of missing something important.
• Data Storage Cost – An email received by 5 people is stored 5 times which then increases storage capacity exponentially.  It also means that mailboxes become quickly cluttered, making it even harder to search and find information.

Machine learning can go a long way to solving the complex problem of email management. It can be used to learn from a user’s email filing behaviour and can prompt the user when it’s not sure where an email should be filed. i.e. automate as much as possible (zero click filing) and use the human brain to do the rest.

Knowledgemill provides an intelligent machine learning email filing system that works seamlessly as part of Microsoft Outlook (Office 365 or Exchange) and integrates with the document management system of your choice or the native Knowledgemill DMS.  It also provides a full filing capability for iPhones, iPads and Android phones.

One question I’m often asked is, how accurate is machine learning? In our experience it can be pushed to 95% but that once you get above 80% you will get some filing errors. You will not be surprised to learn that Knowledgemill files up to 80% of emails automatically to guarantee accuracy.

At Knowledgemill we have been working with many organisations to solve their operational email management problems, Legal firms, construction firms, accounting firms or professional services organisations. Click on the link www.knowledgemill.com to find out more.  We would be pleased to demonstrate/discuss how Knowledgemill works with your existing systems and how it could help your organisation. 

Kevin has been successfully delivering technology solutions to companies for over 30 years both on the buying and selling side of a number of blue chip organisations, e.g. with Deloitte or as a CIO/COO.