Escaping the Inbox HOW TO STOP EMAIL PROLIFERATION AND INCREASE COMPANY PRODUCTIVITY A typical Sunday evening question, after one week of vacation: how many emails will I have in my inbox tomorrow? Answer: about 525 Every office worker receives in average 105 emails every day More revealing data… 4 billion email accounts in 2013 76% personal 24% business Business accounts generated 55% of traffic In absolute values 100 billion emails are sent and received everyday (that’s 1 million per second ) And the number is growing Trend of email traffic 10% 8% 6% 4% 2% 0% -2% -4% -6% 2013 2014 2015 Personal 2016 Business 2017 How email overload affects productivity Separating the wheat from the chaff (inbox management) Archives use a lot of IT resources and are difficult to manage Constant interruptions How did we get to this? “Although email was originally designed as a communications application, it is now being used for additional functions, that it was not designed for, such as task management and personal archiving. We call this email overload.” Lotus Development Corporation, 1996 It’s not email’s fault Email is: direct & personal Modern business needs: collaboration & transparency The solutions so far Inbox management tools Email management training The problem with the old solutions The number of emails is simply too high The better solution Reducing the number of emails The traffic trend we should see 0% -2% -4% -6% -8% -10% -12% -14% -16% 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 How? 1_By bringing email back to its original purpose 2_By using cloud-based technology to manage tasks Email vs cloud Email Private No control on inclusion in threads Indexing is resource-consuming Cloud task management tools Transparent Possibility to join or leave a project Indexing is a built-in feature Difficult to keep track of past and future steps Clear outline of Who, What and When Hard to integrate with other tools Easier to integrate References: "Email Statistics Report." The Radicati Group. Ed. Sara Radicati. 1 May 2011. Web. 19 Jan. 2015. <http://www.radicati.com/wp/wpcontent/uploads/2011/05/Email-Statistics-Report-2011-2015Executive-Summary.pdf> "Email Statistics Report." The Radicati Group. Ed. Sara Radicati. 2013. <http://www.radicati.com/wp/wpcontent/uploads/2013/04/Email-Statistics-Report-2013-2017Executive-Summary.pdf>. T. Iqbal, Shamsi, and Eric Horvitz. "Disruption and Recovery of Computing Tasks: Field Study, Analysis, and Directions." Microsoft. 2007. <http://research.microsoft.com/enus/um/people/horvitz/chi_2007_iqbal_horvitz.pdf>. J. Mark, Gloria, Stephen Voida, and Armand V. Cardello. "“A Pace Not Dictated by Electrons”: An Empirical Study of Work Without Email." University of California. School of Information and Computer Science, 2012. <http://www.ics.uci.edu/~gmark/Home_page/Research_files/CHI 2012.pdf>. Whittaker, Steve, and Candace Sidner. "Email Overload: Exploring Personal Information Management of Email." Lotus Development Corporation. 1 Jan. 1996. <https://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~i385q/readings/Whittaker_Sidn er-1996-Email.pdf>.