FeatureUC&C9 Aug 2018 · 4 min read

RIP Endless Emails: Can Team Collaboration Finally Kill the Inbox?

What does the rise of the collaboration tool mean for email? Is the era of the inbox finally over? Let's look at the facts.

Rebekah Carter

The average employee spends about 28% of their week dealing with emails. In fact, some studies suggest that in information-rich sectors, employees can sift through around 121 emails a day. This is a huge amount of information for us to handle. Up until recently, workers have been unable to stomach the thought of abandoning their inbox.

However, thanks to the rise of collaboration technology, our days of communicating via email may be numbered. Though some people still believe that we'll never be able to give up on email entirely, at the very least, the presence of team apps should ensure that we spend less time unproductive emails.

The Benefits of Banishing Email

The standard email communication strategy just isn't the best tool for the agile and ever-moving business world we live in. We need something that can facilitate our rapid, ongoing and changing conversations. That means less waiting around for something to drop into your inbox, and more efficient conversations through instant messaging, VoIP, and file sharing apps.

Here are just some of the reasons why tools like Alcatel Lucent Rainbow, RingCentral Glip, and Unify Circuit could put the final nail in the coffin for email:

1. Collaboration Tools Deliver Better Productivity

Far from its original intention, email has become something of a productivity killer in recent years. Rather than providing us with relevant, focused information, our email inboxes are a magnet for our attention-sapping our focus with constant distractions.

Collaboration tools with real-time messaging like RingCentral Glip allow users to find the people they need connect with and discuss projects instantly. There's no waiting around for emails to load or sending out mass emails just to find someone who's online. Presence features mean that you can find who you need instantly from a selection of available peers.

2. They Offer a Unified Hub of Information

Collaboration tools can also provide a great space for businesses to share important information that relates to the entire business. With services like Avaya Equinox with Zang Spaces, you can pin important topics on a message feed, and share documents into a central file destination, so that everyone has the resources required to work on a project.

This means that your employees can spend less time searching through file attachments in their email or looking for documents hidden under piles of new emails. Just think of how often you lose information because of missing file attachments, CC's and email forwarding. Digging through email threads is frustrating, but collaboration tools come with search functionalities that make it easier to find the data you need, and comprehensive storage systems for files.

3. Your Team Will Safe a Lot of Time

One of the biggest productivity drainers in the current work environment is the quest to reach "Inbox Zero." Instead of focusing on the task at hand, countless employees find themselves repeatedly checking their email and trying to empty out their correspondence. In fact, our need to manage our emails is even spilling over into our personal lives. Around 50% of people check their emails while in bed.

This feeling that we constantly need to be responding to and checking email messages leads to stress and reduced productivity in your team. Every time you receive an email from a team member, your productivity stops, and you have to cut away from your work to read and respond to it. Collaboration apps can integrate into the systems your teams already use, to provide them with important alerts without pulling them out of their workflow. For instance, you can integrate Alcatel Lucent Rainbow at a CPaaS level for a more immersive work experience.

4. Collaboration Will Become More Efficient

Ultimately, email was never intended to be a collaboration tool. When your team starts using email for reviews, approval, instant messaging and other forms of communication that are time-sensitive, their productivity and efficiency suffer.

Moving your team away from email can give them access to new modes of collaboration that are faster, more reliable, and less prone to issues. Once you find the collaboration tool that works for you, you'll wonder how you ever lived without it.

Email Might Not Be Dead, But It's Not in Charge Anymore

Ultimately, we may never reach a day when we're completely free of email's clutches. According to the Adobe consumer email survey in 2017, the US workplace is still dominated by email inboxes.

However, even if you do rely on your email for some of your collaboration tasks, the right workplace tools could help to reduce your dependence on a somewhat outdated, and inefficient tool. With collaboration apps, your team will discover how to take advantage of the collaboration options best for them, whether it's video conferencing, file sharing, instant messaging, or even a business broadcast.

rate this story

helps rank stories across uc today

The discussion0 takes · attributed & checked

Does this reflect your experience?

opening the room…

Read nextordered by techtelligence · every pick explained

same beat · UC&C