UK firms admit to email management 'chaos'

A third of UK organisations have no clear plans and procedures for dealing with compliance issues

Over a third of large organisations in the UK admit that their email management system is in "complete chaos", a poll has claimed.

A survey released by AIIM, the international authority on enterprise content management, revealed that 38 per cent of end users admitted that their company either had no policy, or were unaware of their company's policy, when it came to email archiving.

AIIM found that a third of UK organisations have no clear plans and procedures for dealing with compliance issues, especially concerning historical records, which poses a number of compliance related risks.

Two thirds describe themselves as being in the very early stages of implementing compliance initiatives, and a quarter have not begun to develop any compliance related strategy at all.

The survey also found that over 90 per cent of end users agree that compliance concerns relating to managing electronic information are here to stay, and that compliance must take a higher priority in order to ensure consistent practices throughout the organisation.

Moreover, only 16 per cent of companies understand that the broader concept relates to information within enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management systems.

Over 60 per cent of users fail to acknowledge that email information falls under compliance requirements for enterprise content management.

Instead, awareness of what compliance means for their organisation centres around well publicised government regulations and legislation, bypassing the fact that compliance extends far beyond regulatory concerns to all company information management processes.

Atle Skjekkeland, vice president of AIIM Europe, said: "These findings highlight a widely varying and inconsistent understanding of how to deal with sensitive company information.

"It clearly indicates the struggle that companies are facing in mounting systematic policies to meet the compliance challenge."