Who Uses Email Archiving Software?
Employees: Anyone in the organization should be able to use this tool to retrieve their emails.
Email managers: Email managers should be able to set archiving permissions and policies through this software. They can also prevent inappropriate email exchange by analyzing risky user patterns and irregular content reports. This could save the company from potential competitive intelligence or espionage.
Legal entities: Court, lawyers, and auditors need to use e-Discovery tools for litigation and legal purposes. It saves them time to find the necessary documents because email archiving solutions can filter and search based on names, email addresses, keywords, and so on.
Challenges with Email Archiving Software
Email archiving solutions can come with their own set of challenges.
Slow email retrieval: Since the email is saved on archive servers, it can be slow to download and upload from that server. Archive storage is inexpensive because it is compensated by a slow transfer speed. Multiple users retrieving at once also slows the server. Buyers need to make sure that the email archive solution server ensures a specific data transfer speed according to the requirement.
Email retrieval access: Unauthorized email access to the archive server can leak important company trade secrets and sensitive information. Email managers need to set the right access for each account on day one.
Redundancy with other backup software: Companies today have other disaster recovery and backup solutions that do similar things as email archive software. While the email archive has its own unique functionality and use case, the cost to store multiple copies of emails with different software can rise significantly with time. Buyers need to make sure that the future storage cost doesn’t exceed the budget.
Which Companies Should Buy Email Archiving Software?
While all companies that use email should consider email archiving solutions, below are the two industries that especially need the software:
Finance industry: The financial industry is heavily regulated so it requires email archiving to meet local laws. There are incentives for companies and employees to alter email copies for financial gains. Email archiving solutions prevent that by guaranteeing tamper-free email copies. Also, financial documents have industry words and numbers that are hard to discover. Many email archiving solutions provide search options that can include keywords and similar terms to find the right content quickly. Generic email searches often lack this functionality, making them inferior solutions that fail to meet the industry needs.
Healthcare industry: Sensitive email exchanges between healthcare providers and patients are regulated by governments and targeted by cyberattacks/ransoms. Having an archive solution prevents unauthorized temperament of emails, ensures compliance, and provides business continuity. Since patient care can be very time sensitive, sending and receiving emails on time may save lives.
How to Buy Email Archiving Software
Requirements Gathering (RFI/RFP) for Email Archiving Software
Buyers may be tempted to create long lists of detailed requirements or ones that are too vague. Ideally, an RFI should be detailed enough to cover the essential requirements but not too long to discourage employees and vendors from using it. Since not all requirements have the same importance, buyers should assign them priorities and focus on the most important ones.
Must-have features are critical features that the company needs to run its daily operations based on their industry. For example, financial companies need software that can process financial search terms and secure email temperament policy.
Important requirements should have a high priority but aren’t necessarily deal breakers if there is a replacement. For example, advanced analytics and dashboards to predict user patterns are important but not critical when the buyer already uses employee monitoring software that can analyze email content.
Nice-to-have features may vary by department and team. For example, mobile apps that can retrieve email on a phone instead of a PC are useful but oftentimes unnecessary.
Compare Email Archiving Software Products
Create a long list
When making a long list, it should have no more than 10 products selected by eliminating all options that are not a good fit for the buyer. An easy start is to check what email software the company is using. The email archive software needs to be compatible with the company’s email software. If a company is using Gmail, they shouldn’t buy an archiver that focuses on on-premises since Gmail is a SaaS product. Also, users need to look into the legal requirements (such as GDPR data protection) for their company and industry. Some software solutions ensure regulatory compliance with specific laws, but that doesn’t guarantee that they always do. Email archiving software is changed by the number of users and/or space used for storage. Users can calculate an ideal budget based on that and filter out companies that don't meet it.
Create a short list
The products in the long list can be very similar at first sight, so buyers need more details about the products and the vendors to create a short list. This is where the requirements list comes in handy. Decision makers use this list to generate RFIs, which ask vendors to provide detailed information on how they deliver the features needed by the buyer. Some vendors may decline to respond to RFIs, which automatically disqualifies them from the selection process. Others are eliminated because they provided unsatisfactory responses.
Vendors also provide testimonials, customer references, and technical documentation to prove that they have the qualifications and expertise to deliver the product on time and within budget.
Conduct demos
Demos should be conducted live, not with slide decks or screenshots. Vendors should follow a script with scenarios created by the buyer. An example of a scenario would be to show how the system can save copies of emails, search specific emails based on industry terms, and retrieve the email on time. Buyers should take notes of the speed of data transfer and space used to store emails, as not all compression, data transfer, and storage options are created the same.
All email archive vendors should use the same demo script, and buyers need to rate each criterion and scenario using a rating system such as scores from one to five (where one is the lowest rating and five the highest).
All members of the selection team who attend demos should rate the functionality being demonstrated. The results can then be combined and analyzed to identify the main strengths and weaknesses of each product.
Selection of Email Archiving Software
Choose a selection team
IT managers, auditors, lawyers, and some end users should be included in the selection team. External consultants and outsourced IT teams may also provide a neutral perspective or help with negotiation.
Negotiation
Understandably, companies want to reduce costs during pricing negotiations, but this should not happen to the users' detriment. Instead, it is preferable to focus on getting the most value for the money. An example is customer support, which is included in the software's price but is usually limited to working hours and weekdays. Global companies may require 24/7 follow-the-sun support, which means that issues can be passed between teams in different time zones, so the users do not have to wait too long for a resolution.
Negotiation also includes legal and contractual terms, as well as service level agreements (SLAs). One example is cloud uptime, which guarantees that SaaS archiving products are operational. Most vendors provide an uptime of 95% and higher, but even a few hours a month can be very disruptive for regulated companies in finance and healthcare.
Final decision
The final decision should be made by a team, not a single person. It is also essential to use a structured approach and the data gathered during the previous phases. Decision support systems can prioritize requirements, identify the strengths and weaknesses of each product, and create various buying scenarios.
