10
Nov
Outlook or industry specific?
in General
Comments
If you are reading this, like many others, you’ve maybe been running your business using Outlook without much thought as to what benefits the alternatives might bring. The status quo is either free or has a minimal monthly cost and, OK there might be a few wobbles, but most of the time it’s working well. There are always a few challenges, for example, as the number of emails increase Outlook might not be as fast as it used to be, but so what if it’s cheap or even free? After all…
…why try to fix something if it’s not broken?
Rather than just considering the downside to a change, the chances are you will be surprised at the scale of the upside, the value that can be released. It is certainly worthwhile and costs nothing to take a closer look. Although a move to industry specific software is not for every organisation, for some it can make the difference between a good and a great year.
Definition: industry specific software is any digital solution created for a particular market or industry. It is designed to meet the needs of companies within the same industry, often having fairly unique operational needs and allowing access to often unique features whilst avoiding the expense of customised software.
For example, CompassAir develops messaging and business software for the global maritime sector. In addition to clients moving to us from other specialist providers, we have a very significant number who made the move away from Outlook. Since doing so they have seen substantial improvements, primarily from a significant reduction in time spent reading, replying to and filing emails. The informal feedback we have indicates the weekly time saved runs into hours, not surprising given McKinsey’s observations that up to 28% of our working week is spent using email.
However, probably the most important benefit has been in the way that teams have been able to collaborate. This has the obvious knock-on effect on profitability but, just as important, there are the less tangible benefits arising from more efficient, team based working, including reducing stress levels in the workplace.
Having the right tools to do one’s job clearly contributes to less stress in the workplace.
Case Study
By way of a very simple example, a small shipbroking company with 10 users who joined us had always experienced tension around the time of the Summer vacations. With each user working within their own Outlook “silo”, a major push was always required to ensure the incoming emails of absent employees were covered in some way. This needed the foresight to forward emails, letting colleagues review them, arrangements which take time and effort to organise.
There was also the added danger that a potentially lucrative deal, where speed of response is critical, was missed. In the past, many users felt this risk was too high and considered it essential to regularly check emails whilst on holiday. This Summer, with shared mailboxes and improved collaboration, we gather the holidays were a bit more relaxed than before! Not only that, this particular client is convinced one especially valuable deal would have been missed had it not been for NotifyMe and ShipLink – software from CompassAir that is able to read emails, storing information contained in them and then it updates your vessel database.
| Outlook Pros | Outlook Cons |
| inexpensive, familiar and easy to use | harder to update and manage |
| suitable for small amounts of data | search speeds deteriorate significantly |
| readily available help and guidance | possibility of “application pauses” |
| software integration widely available | sharing documents can be demanding |
| Industry Specific Pros | Industry Specific Cons |
| sector related features available | potential hidden soft costs |
| easy to find email delivery delay function | training likely to be required |
| time and effort saved using automation | time and effort needed to get to know |
| currrent and historic data easily available | |
| facilitates collaboration | |
| your competitors are probably using it |
The pros and the cons – Outlook
ADVANTAGES
One can quickly see the attraction of Outlook. For most people, it will have been one of the first programs they used, familiarity making it one of the easiest to use. In addition, it is probably one of the most suitable and cost effective ways for dealing with relatively low numbers of emails in small organisations.
Given that almost everyone has used Outlook at some stage, any help and guidance is readily available from friends and colleagues without the need to consult dedicated support. With its use so widespread, Outlook is probably one of the programs with the highest number of “how to” videos available online.
Maybe the most important advantage is that software integration, from the Microsoft ecosystem, is available and easy to understand, meaning the output of one program can easily be used in conjunction with the other. That, and being inexpensive or even free to use, if you are still using pre-Office365 software, makes Outlook the natural choice for many small enterprises when starting out.
Shared mailboxes are available when using Office365, created by an administrator to allow multiple users (each needing their own Office365 licence) to send and receive emails from the same address. There are however some limitations, such as the maximum size of a free shared mailbox capped at 50GB, thereafter needing a separate licence, and it cannot be used as a primary mailbox. More importantly, in operating the shared mailbox there are some shortcomings with this generic software. Examples include individual users not being able to add personal flags to messages; when one user reads an email it marks it as read for everyone sharing the mailbox; and it is not possible to identify those users who have read a particular email.
DISADVANTAGES
As a business grows however, the challenges increase. If growth brings with it an ever increasing email flow, it becomes harder to keep up, update and manage – e.g., a shipbroker dealing with hundreds, increasing to thousands of emails a day will find this to be a frustrating, unproductive distraction, namely wasting time on “admin” that should be devoted to more profitable activities.
Older versions of Outlook, i.e. pre Office365, use “.pst” and “.ost” files to store information locally. The more emails sent and received the larger these files become, meaning search speeds deteriorate. Microsoft has also warned of the possibility of “application pauses“, which can occur more frequently when the size of these files exceed 10GB.
Sharing documents in Outlook can also be demanding – it can be done but needs each co-worker to have an account with, e.g. SharePoint or Microsoft OneDrive. CompassAir, on the other hand, allows documents to be filed within the application. As an example, this makes life so much easier when corresponding with colleagues about changes that a number of users need to make to a particular document, as well as ensuring that everyone has access to the latest version.
Making a change – industry specific software
ADVANTAGES
The question to ask next is: does going industry specific meet my needs? To answer this we need to consider the characteristics of these solutions in more detail.
When designed for use in a specific sector, software will often make available useful features as well as eliminating those which are not necessary. Being a generic product, Outlook aims to be all things to all people and, as such, is crammed with many features that the average user is not even aware of, let alone will use. Too much functionality can sometimes obscure some of the simpler features.
This obscuring is avoided with some sector specific applications and often arises because most of us teach ourselves only the basics of Outlook. At CompassAir, we find one very simple, useful feature is the ability to delay the delivery of emails – with a shared inbox this can be used to allow colleagues to review messages before they are sent. Whilst this delay function is also available in Outlook, it is not obvious where to find it. Because we know our users make good use of it, our “send” button has a drop down menu that can determine the time when the email needs to be delivered.
Time and effort can be saved through automation: for example, in the maritime sector CompassAir understands the terms and the context of emails, it can recognise shipping parlance, understand the context and identify open positions and cargo orders from emails. Eventually, unstructured, partial or even mistyped information is automatically converted into structured data that is stored in the integrated database leaving time for brokers to focus on those decisions important to the business and which create value.
If individuals are given the tools to work together then they will find it much easier to achieve a defined and common purpose. Software designed with an industry in mind will facilitate collaboration and maximise productivity (see our article on the benefits available from using email collaboration software). Not only that, your competitors are probably already using specialised software. Embracing a change may be the only way to stay competitive in the longer term.
DISADVANTAGES
As it is dependent on specific circumstances, changing software is not always advisable, a possible move necessitating a detailed investigation, careful thought and planning. It can be time consuming and expensive with a hidden “soft cost” if attention is not given to implementation through a vendor that understands the needs of your organisation and of your team. Soft costs are generally intangible and represent expenditure not easy to estimate. Training will probably be required in order to avoid these costs and to make best use of and extract most value from the new software. A major consideration is those costs in terms of time and effort, in moving away from something that is already familiar and apparently inexpensive to use.
To highlight the importance of planning and the impact these soft costs have, the following chart illustrates the failure rates of CRM implementation over a period of years, as observed in various surveys (chart courtesy of skuid).
