In the blog series Prediction Time, AIIM president John Mancini shares his thoughts on the role of email in 2015 and comes to the conclusion, “Email is once again cool.” He says businesses had declared email as primary communication channel as dead more than once in the past in favor of social systems. Meanwhile, he believes that thanks to various innovations, the exact opposite is now true. People once again like email.
Mancini gives the following examples in support of this statement:
- Google Inbox — Google has developed a new Gmail-based product that organizes email in a completely different way: grouped, neat, fresh and with automatic reminder feature. As of now, you can only register by invitation. However, the service should be available to all users in the near future. A new email address is not necessary, if you already have a Gmail account.
- IBM Verse — IBM also has a novel concept for email that can be summarized under the credo “Your email gets you.” A glance at the tool’s site reveals an intriguing promise: “Imagine email that works for you, instead of letting you do the work.” IBM illustrates the benefits through before-and-after scenarios. Instead of switching between different platforms, Multitasker Mail, social media and calendar can be managed in one place. Rather than manually having to search for attachments, the search function automatically includes them. This and many additional promising features are IBM’s approach to modernizing email.
- Acompli — Microsoft lags somewhat behind these developments, but after acquiring Acompli, it should soon have its own smart social dashboard solution in its pocket to combine various internal mail and cloud solutions with external channels in a user-friendly way. Based on these new interpretations of the old medium, Mancini is predicting a revival. Emails are no longer managed isolated in inboxes but — combined with intelligent analytics and organization solutions — create a new standard in user-friendliness. Competition among the big players to establish their technologies as the leading one among consumers, of course, helps innovation along, too.
What do you think? Has email ever lost in relevance? Do new, intelligent solutions with social hub features have the potential to widely replace traditional solutions? We can’t wait to read your comments.
