Searching for a New Year's resolution

While e-discovery continues to be a hot topic, for most it conjures up images of forensically stamped electronic information used by large organisations in corporate legal proceedings. In most cases it's real worth is empowering employees to access, search and work with their own information to help them react swiftly and efficiently to business email related challenges.

I was recently on a conference call with a supplier in an attempt to resolve an issue with a project. As is typical with most disputes, the issue was one of communication, with a disagreement over what we believed had been promised versus what had been delivered.

As is typical these days, most of our communication during the project had been conducted via email. As the date for the call loomed large I was faced with task of trying to pull together an audit trail to support our position.

Because all my emails are archived I had confidence that however I choose to manage (or mismanage) my mailbox, all my written communication has been captured and a record kept, which would make my position as strong as possible on the call.

What was critical in this case was that I had easy access to my archive though Outlook, with intuitive tools to perform and refine granular searches across the information held there.

This empowered me to pull together all the information I needed within hours, aiding my preparation for the call to resolve our issues. Armed with what I knew was a watertight audit trail of communications, I was able to keep the call swift, gain common agreement from both parties and ensure the project was put back on track.

Previously such calls would have often escalated to senior personnel within both parties, dampening the possibility of a swift resolution and encouraging the prospect of more critical failures.  In this case, my email search tools not only saved me time; they also saved an important business relationship from going off track.

Download our free IT Whitepapers to learn more