WorkPool Features
Challenges around effective email management
Email has become an integral part of our business operations, not only in the way we communicate with other people and organizations but in the way we manage our lives. The pace at which emails are being sent and received and overall volume is ever increasing and unlikely to decrease over time as more and more people get connected every day. Where people had to follow a process and send a well-considered letter or fax in the past, everyone with your email address now have direct access to your inbox and can demand attention. Due to the pervasive nature of email and the ability of communication to captivate a user’s attention, the traditional email client like Outlook has for many people gone from being just a basic communications tool to a mission critical business operations and information management tool use, used for:
- Managing their tasks/commitments/workflow
- A storage facility for information and documents
- A backup or single source of reference for all communication
- Storing client and contact information
Communication tools, on their own, were not designed to be task managers and can never replace the need for a business nervous system. Email clients play but one part in a much bigger picture. Your system (or way of working) is broken and you are probably quite stressed if:
- Emails are coming in faster than you can deal with them, which means you often feel overwhelmed or you are falling behind.
- Your day revolves around crisis management, attending to work based on interruptions (including new emails arriving) or always catching up working on whatever is in your inbox.
- A structured way of working and traditional task lists do not work for you and you struggle to cope with all the demands on your time. You have a habit of monitoring emails and “replying quickly” to someone so that you can at least feel like you are making some progress but then leaving the “big things” for later when it is “quiet”.
- People abuse their direct access to you (and your inbox), pushing their own agendas, priorities and expectations onto you.
- You are CC’ed on, or you CC everyone else on, all emails. This invites further, often unwanted, communication which can quickly escalate and get out of hand or create noise by involving you on things you do not need to be involved with.
How does WorkPool solve these problems?
We have 3 options to deal with emails. You can:
- Continue to use your existing email client (like Outlook) and copy and paste information into WorkPool as emails.
- Switch to WorkPool’s email client (similar to Gmail and Yahoo) with advanced features to simplify your administration. This is preferable for users sending and receiving mostly business communications only and dealing with high volumes.
- Configure your email server to continue receiving emails in your email client (Outlook) and selectively drag-and-drop emails into your WorkPool environment. This is useful for people who receive both personal and business related emails in their inbox to filter communications themselves.
Pulling email communication into WorkPool has many benefits
- Seamless integration of email communication into your business audit trail. Email is only one means of communication and WorkPool allows you to weave this information into all the appropriate places such as on tasks, in customer folders, etc. so you can see it in context of all other actions, phone calls and meetings.
- Email communication is significantly reduced, as people now have access to business related messages at their fingertips and do not have to be CC’ed on emails to ensure they have access to information. People can track progress and no longer have to ask for updates as they can see for themselves what is happening on a case, in real time.
- WorkPool looks at the contents of every email and pre-classifies it either as work, or general content. It will consider things like the sender, recipients, whether it is related to existing tasks and then suggest appropriate actions and filing locations to you. The more you use and send emails through WorkPool the smarter it will get in helping you with the filing. This also significantly reduces the risks around misfiling and deleting of email communication as users are presented with calculated options rather than having to manually link emails or guess the most appropriate storage location.
- Email is finally being “managed” rather than it managing you. Emails are received, reviewed, and then filed (linked) against the correct folder/s and task/s allowing you to continue working in a focussed and structured way, getting things done on time and keeping to all your next action (reminder) dates. This is a much more effective approach to managing work and allows you to apply proper time management principles.
- One email request from a customer could contain or trigger multiple actions or processes, often to different people. In WorkPool you can kick off multiple tasks from the same email to different people without the need to pass on the communication as it will be linked automatically.
- A consolidated, permission controlled contacts database where you can lookup customers and suppliers and send emails to them based on the latest information stored in your company directory. The email contacts are no longer separate from the business records, or duplicated on each person’s address book.
- Everyone has access to the same information and evidentiary string of events when looking at the customer or supplier’s folder and related tasks. You finally have a shared view and shared customer/supplier email folder instead of everyone duplicating or managing their own email folders.
- Reduce duplication of information (messages and attachments). WorkPool will only stores one copy of an email in the database, which means we use a lot less storage space and one person doing the work of linking and filing an email means all the recipients benefit from it. All information is backed up on the server so no worries if your laptop/PC gets stolen or the hard drive crashes.
- Add smart, mailbox processors that can listen for emails on a certain mailbox and then automatically start tasks or processes for you and send back an automated ticket (reference) number used for tracking.
Other benefits and features:
- Centralised control over all email templates and content snippets. Write professional emails and save these as templates for others to use as the company standard.
- Attach and send standard documents such as checklists, disclosures and brochures from the document repository on WorkPool. Doing this will ensure people are always using the latest versions of all documents.
- Smart attachment panels will lookup and display key documents like agreements or policy documents from customer or supplier folders as well as process documents for you to attach this easily.
- Link the same email to multiple folders reducing administration and preventing duplication of data.
- Record time spent on emails to reduce non-billable time and see how much time and effort you are spending on emails in general or per specific customer, supplier or project.
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