Editor's letter

Ease of use, low price and software ubiquity are factors that have ensured e-mail has emerged as the de facto communication tool for business. With an estimated 35 billion e-mails being sent per day worldwide, the medium has grown from a method of quick and simple one-to-one communication to a broadcast medium with which companies and teams collaborate, share information and make group decisions.

But as the growth in volume of e-mails shows no sign of slowing, organisations are finding themselves struggling to maintain control over the critical information held in employees’ e-mail folders. Compliance to legislation, such as Sarbanes-Oxley, the Companies Bill, Basel II and the UK’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), has put timely and accurate access to corporate information at the top of board-level agendas. And with that, e-mail control has become a thorn in the side of big business. With this in mind, we’ve included a 24 page supplement in this issue containing the results of our comprehensive survey of the e-mail management marketplace, as well as articles from Delphi Group and Ovum.

While we’re on the subject of e-mail, Gary Eastwood examines the latest generation of intelligent e-mail management systems in this month’s trend tracker, and finds out that they are more than just an aid to corporate governance and compliance.

Setting e-mail aside, compliance endeavours are still dominating the business processes at many UK public-sector organisations. While most have reacted positively to the implementation of FOI legislation earlier this year, for those drowning under a heap of information requests, compliance is still something of an enigma. But all is not lost. Have you ever considered conducting a thorough audit of your FOI processes? In the workshop section, records manager Steve Bailey argues that an audit is a sure-fire way to future success and offers advice on the assessment process (page 36). You’ll also find the next installments of Jan Wyllie and Paul Chin’s respective workshops on taxonomy maintenance and the human side of intranets.

Jessica Twentyman charts the journey of the corporate portal in this month’s cover story and finds out why companies are showing renewed interest, particularly in the process portal.

Along with case studies from Ernst & Young and Vodafone, and our comprehensive news and opinion section, this double issue contains plenty of information to keep you going until you return to these pages in September.

I hope you enjoy this month’s issue. As always, if you have any comments, questions or suggestions, please do not hesitate to contact me at kclifton@ark-group.com.

Kate Clifton
Deputy editor

Features

Workshop: Assessing compliance Free
So, how has it been for you? Are you being celebrated as a soothsayer, for the timely introduction of proportionate measures that are enabling your organisation to ride the wave, or are you slowly slipping beneath the surface and drowning in a sea of unanswered requests? Perhaps you are in the seemingly enviable but ultimately worrying situation of presiding over an expensive and elaborate set of systems and procedures that could easily process one hundred requests a week, but is actually only required to deal with two per month.

Workshop: Zen and the art of taxonomy maintenance Part III Free
Last month, the focus was on clarifying and agreeing purposes of a taxonomy project, and making a business case. The three main purposes of using taxonomies were identified as information retrieval, intelligence discovery and supporting workgroup collaboration.

Workshop: The human side of intranets Free
Ever since the industrial revolution, there’s been an air of humanity against machinery – a sort of John Henry versus the steam hammer mentality. Today, many computer users are still feeling the effects of a technological revolution, trying in vain to reconcile between what technology is supposed to do and what it actually does do.

Case study: Vodafone UK Free
Vodafone has become one of the world’s largest mobile-communications communities with 154.8 million proportionate customers, equity interests in 27 countries and partner networks in a further 14 countries. To keep up with this demand, we wanted to deliver a single customer, partner and vendor proposition across the entire (and vast) group footprint. The successful project would result in the provision of a unified enterprise view to employees and shareholders, in fact to all stakeholders.

Case study: Ernst & Young Free
Many organisations are currently grappling with making decisions about taxonomies – determining if they are needed, what they should be used for, why they are important and how to create, implement and maintain them. The members of the Ernst & Young global professional services organisation decided in 1994 that an important component of our knowledge strategy was to create, implement and promote a global taxonomy to enhance internal knowledge navigation and document-level knowledge identification.

Cover story: The re-invention of the portal Free
The corporate portal has taken something of a beating in recent years. A litany of failed or scaled-back portal implementations – attributable to poor alignment with business goals, over-ambitious scoping of projects, incompatibility with emerging portal standards and haphazard budget justification – have given plenty of businesses cause to consider whether the technology can truly provide a robust but flexible gateway to vital business information, documents and knowledge.

Regulars

The last word: Employee self service Free
Organisations that have been on the internal e-enablement journey for some time will tell you one area that can start driving significant business value is employee and manager self-service. Not just in the obvious areas like HR but, more critically, across your operational processes.

Trend tracker: E-mail management Free
In the wrong hands e-mail can be a dangerously powerful tool – as highlighted by the recent ‘ketchup-gate’ scandal. Richard Phillips, a senior associate with City law firm Baker & McKenzie, was forced to quit his job in June after he sent a message demanding £4 from a secretary, who accidentally splattered his suit with tomato sauce during lunch.

Opinion: Desperately seeking the cyber shelf Free
I owe Bob Bater big time. The information architecture specialist posted a note to the taxonomy list on jiscmail (www.jiscmail.ac.uk/taxonomy) citing an excellent essay by Clay Shirky. If you want to have a little read it’s at http://shirky.com/writings/ontology_overrated.html.

Opinion: Let's get podcasting! Free
It’s said that consumer adoption of new technologies is well over a year ahead of that in the corporate and public sectors. Some consumer technology isn’t appropriate for large organisations, or can be hampered by security concerns. Some is purely entertainment-related, some is expensive, most is yet unproven and some is given a misleading name. I feel this is the case with podcasting.