By Amy Dron – Inbotiqa, Corporate Communications

Inbotiqa has been shortlisted for a second award in 2019, the Best Enterprise Project category of the third annual National Technology Awards. Organised by National Technology News, the National Technology Awards (NTA) are a celebration of technology in the year. The awards recognise the pioneers of new technology and help drive standards and encourage excellence.

The announcement comes while Inbotiqa is in the 2019 Barclays Accelerator powered by Techstars in London. One of only 10 startups chosen each year, Inbotiqa was selected from 740 applicants from 67 countries to take its place on the world-renowned accelerator programme at Rise, located near Silicon Roundabout in Old Street.

The NTA Best Enterprise Project category sought outstanding examples of how technology has been harnessed to solve enterprise-wide issues. From banking to retail, broadcast to manufacturing, shortlisted companies were required to combine insight and implementation of technology to the highest standards. The winner will be announced at the awards ceremony in May.

Inbotiqa has also been shortlisted in the Best Use of Data & Analytics category in the FStech Awards 2019, the winner of which will be revealed in March.

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By Amy Dron – Inbotiqa, Corporate Communications

Inbotiqa has been shortlisted in the Best Use of Data and Analytics category in the FStech Awards 2019. Now in their 19th year, the FStech Awards recognise excellence and innovation in the field of information technology within the UK and EMEA financial services sector.

In the Best Use of Data and Analytics category, Inbotiqa has been shortlisted alongside companies including HSBC, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse international. The category recognises that financial services companies have never had so much data at their fingertips, providing a vast pool of customer and business information that can be used to generate insights, tailor product offerings, drive business efficiencies or develop entirely new financial platforms or ways of delivering services.

The award recognises a company, solution or project that demonstrates the innovative and large-scale use of data and analytics to the benefit of a business, their customers or the financial industry’s infrastructure. Winners will be announced on the 21 March 2019 at a gala dinner at London’s Marriott Hotel in Grosvenor Square.

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The struggle to stay on top of the beast that is email can feel relentless. Perhaps it’s time to reinvent the strategy so we’re no longer fighting email, but taming it…

It’s hard to think of anyone in the back-office ecosystem who would not be familiar with the daily battle to keep a handle on out-of-control emails in inboxes and shared mailboxes. The constant struggle of ensuring emails are processed on time, preventing any being missed, managing folders efficiently, staying complaints amid myriad rules and regulations, and so on, saps resources and draws focuses away from tasks that truly add value.

As such, it’s rightly so that most back-office management and technology teams look to replace email. They generally do so by creating online portals to submit instructions, as opposed to emailing them. This is realised by building execution-management tools and user interfaces which are implemented using custom-built workflow systems or creating them in-house (an expensive option).

While all of these solutions work to a degree, they only resolve a slice of the issues around high-volume email traffic. They also tend to add a fair amount of additional manual work. All the while, our inboxes and shared mailboxes remain open on our desktops as they consistently contain work that is non-standard, of a high priority or introduces a new request or function that has not yet been prioritised.

What can often be forgotten are the intrinsic benefits of email. These are, after all, why billions of emails are sent each and every day, and why email remains such a popular form of business communication. Email is flexible in terms of what it can be used for, therefore ideal in complex business environments; it’s universally used – internally by businesses and externally between them and their customers; and it’s an official communication channel, used to convey information formally and on record with stakeholders. These are all great benefits.

The ideal solution, therefore, is to tame email by fixing the pain points, not fighting them. The main pain points being: how to track ownership; how to do this across entire organisations; and how to extract useful metrics and analytics out of this valuable data. Once this is possible, it enables the effective management of email-based processes through allocated task ownership. It also generates real-time data to identify slices of work within email and migrate them to specialist systems.

At iNBOTiQA, we created our YUDOmail solution with all this in mind. In a previous blog, our Director of Technology discusses in more detail the journey that has led us to the next step in taming the back-office email beast: YUDOsmart. With YUDOmail and YUDOsmart, we tame the beast that is email, then harness it to extract the latent power within, helping to cuts costs, boost productivity, reduce risk and improve customer service. It is possible to give up the fight and enjoy the benefits of tamed emails and inboxes.

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One of our Tier 1 banking clients just completed their Inbotiqa YUDOmail pilot. A fascinating insight was brought to light by a very specific metric: the chase rates of both internal and external counterparties (i.e. how many follow follow-ups or reminders were sent) and who they had to chase. The client shared with us a few recurring themes around this valuable discovery so we tested it with some of our other clients, including non-banking ones.  This revealed a number of recurring behaviour patterns across the board, all of which can be identified and resolved with the volumes metric from YUDOmail.

Here, we are pleased to share some lessons we gained from this revealing exercise.

Inbound chaser emails: Noise and recurring issues

We define an inbound chaser email as an inbound email following a previous inbound email on the same topic and from the same email address. We uncovered two key inbound-chaser themes.

Firstly, a significant number of inbound chaser emails are not only system generated, they are also sent within one hour of the original email. These are deemed as ‘noise’ chasers by Inbotiqa clients. With the volumes metric in YUDOmail, our clients can request the generators of these emails to switch them off or to increase the chasing interval to a reasonable time. This small change means that human resources are not distracted from solving the actual underlying issues by interim noise.

The second was the ability to identify the root causes of ‘true’ chasers. Our clients were able to identify recurring chasers from the same sources, which indicated a root issue on their side. With this information, they were able to eliminate root causes thereby removing the need for the initial query as well as the chasers.

Outbound chasing and repeat offenders

Outbound chasers are defined as “an outbound email following another outbound email on the same topic and to the same email address”. A major theme emerged from our data: most chasing was needed for repeat offenders. The YUDOmail metrics revealed two indicators: Firstly, often 80% of chasers where sent to only a handful of repeat offenders. Secondly, that multiple chasers were needed to an even smaller recurring group of repeat offenders.

Inbotiqa clients are therefore able to influence staff behaviour so that the number of chaser emails required to resolve an issue can be reduced, improving task turnaround time and operational efficiency. Another key benefit of YUDOmail’s data is that not only does it tell you who needs chasing – it also exposes the types of issues they are being chased about. This allows our clients to reach out to repeat offenders to resolve any specific recurring issues and eliminate those root causes.

Actionable analytics and metrics

The beauty is that these simple metrics, namely the volumes of inbound and outbound chasers, and who and which issues they involve, provide immediately actionable metrics. These can then be used to:

• Reduce email volumes which in turn frees up valuable human resources to do real work;
• Identify recurring issues within your organisation and fix root causes, thereby preventing issues arising in the first place; and
• Enable positive behaviour change among both internal and external stakeholders.

The bottom line is that fixing root causes and enabling behaviour change means fewer breaks, fewer emails and happier clients.

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The negative effects on managers of keeping up with email traffic were laid bare in recently published research from Michigan State University (MSU). In an article on the institution’s website, “Is Email evil? Bosses are getting boxed in by their inboxes”, lead researcher, MSU management professor Russell Johnson, discusses the research and how distractions from email interruptions impact managers, their productivity, and their ability to lead. Effective email management is at the heart of our Inbotiqa YUDOmail platform so we read the findings with great interest.

Published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, the MSU research ‘Boxed in by your inbox: Implications of daily e-mail demands for managers’ leadership behaviours found that while employees spend more than 90 minutes per day recovering from email interruptions, managers are similarly afflicted but with further-reaching implications. Johnson, an associate professor in the Department for Management in MSU’s Broad College, describes how recovering from such interruptions not only means managers fail to meet goals. It also leads to neglect of their responsibilities as managers meaning that subordinates lack the leadership behaviour they need to thrive.

To compound matters further, the research also found that managers recover from feeling overwhelmed and unproductive due to email demands by limiting their leader behaviours and pivoting to tactical duties; and that this action is strategic and intentional as it makes managers feel more productive. Employees and thus outcomes suffer from a lack of leadership behaviour, which Johnson describes as relating to motivating and inspiring subordinates, conveying why work tasks are important, and talking optimistically about the future. He went on to say that there was a strong correlation between leader behaviour and employee performance.

At Inbotiqa, we recognise and help clients realise the benefits of effective email management, seeing dramatic reductions of 55% in the time spent on email management once our Intelligent Business Email platform has been implemented.  Turnaround times are reduced through clear task allocation and performance management, while analytics reduce email volumes by eliminating unnecessary system-generated emails while identifying root causes of chaser emails.

Valuable academic research like that produced by MSU highlights the range of negative effects resulting from ‘email overload’, both direct and knock-on. With the advances in effective email management and analytics that YUDOsmart brings to the Inbotiqa platform, we’re looking forward to further contributing to reducing email traffic and the significant negative effects such high volumes can have on our clients’ managers, teams and productivity.

Citation: “Boxed in by your inbox: Implications of daily e-mail demands for managers’ leadership behaviors,” Christopher C. Rosen, Lauren S. Simon, Ravi S. Gajendran, Russell E. Johnson, Hun Whee Lee, and Szu-Han (Joanna) Lin. Journal of Applied Psychology, Sep 17, 2018. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/apl0000343.

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Before embarking on my journey with Inbotiqa, I spent several years as a technologist in charge of developing and managing workflow solutions in the banking industry. My team was often responsible for automating business processes that involved collaboration between several groups.

Whether it was processing loan applications, trades or even responding to customers’ queries, it was as if the data associated with that process was being passed through, to borrow from manufacturing paradigm, an ‘assembly line’. The various groups involved were the ‘skilled craftsmen’, tasked with doing parts of the assembly.

But what about the conveyor? – the other key component of the assembly line.

As desktop computers replaced typewriters, email became the conveyor. Email itself has now been around for more than two decades and is now omnipresent, an essential tool for enterprises. An email address is one of the first resources that is allotted to a new employee. All sorts of communications, from reports and approvals to holiday applications, are routed via email.

Email addresses are not limited to personal work email addresses. Teams or sometimes even whole divisions and departments have email addresses and distribution lists to allow for dissemination of information beyond just individuals. Often, such email addresses become essential parts of business processes. Then each email that arrives on such a team email address is not just a piece of communication – it is a task or a to-do. As such, it has implicit requirements such as an expectation of response or a timeliness of completing the action.

However, email lacks inbuilt support for the distribution of work, reporting or audit. Of course, here the argument in favour email is that it always meant to be a channel for the dissemination of information – and it is extremely efficient at that. That said, these additional expectations have led businesses to look for alternative solutions to cater to these expectations. Workflow solutions cater to exactly this need, whether readymade or developed in-house.

I spent years developing several such solutions, which almost always catered to a specific problem or businesses process. I call these “point” solutions. Each point solution worked efficiently for the specific process and improved efficiency, time savings, cost savings and so on.

“Despite moving the core process out of email

into a point solution, we ended up

integrating the point solution with email.”

 

These point solutions would result in applications that would have a separate internal conveyor for flow of information. End users were expected to look into the application for information associated with their specific business process. Over time, we observed that we would get requests from end users such as notifications of new tasks and status changes – via email. There were even cases where the arrival of an email at some specific address was the starting point of a process.

Then there were managers who would rather check reports delivered to their email account than check them by opening the business application. So despite moving the core process out of email into a point solution, we ended up integrating the point solution with email.

Today, most employees in large organizations start the day by checking their email. It’s an essential part of every employee’s routine. The aforementioned problems with email continue to exist and so do the point solutions that attempt to solve them. It’s almost as if there is an impending need for convergence of both.

At Inbotiqa, we recognized this need for convergence of email and workflow. One of our first steps in product development was a seamless integration with email. YUDOmail now provides not only a workflow solution but something that can totally replace team mailboxes or distribution lists. YUDOmail was not the first solution to address this need, but it created the next evolutionary step. And with the addition of YUDOsmart to the Inbotiqa platform, the next leap is made. Suffice to say, as email itself enters its 50s (as suggested by wiki entry on email) the stage is set for some exciting changes.

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As a result of striving for an empty inbox (we’ll call this “fake inbox zero”), some people resort to methods such as:

• Going nuclear, whereby the user just clears all items by archiving and/or deleting.
• Running a search/filter on specific items as and when needed and letting the other items pile up, making the process more arduous each time around. Think of it like never cleaning your room, but knowing “that special place” you leave your keys!
• Avoiding it altogether, mistaking ignorance for bliss.

Alright, so that’s all fine and good if it’s your own personal inbox. Sure, maybe the latest deals are just more, unnecessary noise and you really don’t need any more inspirational quotes to lighten up your day… but what about business!?

What about when risk is involved, along with customer satisfaction, work related events and other deadlines you have coming up? What about internal email/messaging and org-wide notices?

Well, everything has its time, place and responsible persons. Enter YUDOmail. YUDOmail enables businesses and teams to achieve Inbox Zero WITHOUT going nuclear, deleting stuff you shouldn’t, and losing things you have to follow up on.

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Remember when you first started using email? If you were an early user (pre-1990) you were probably getting 5-10 emails a day and co-workers still picked up the phone or stopped by your office to ask you for something. It was fairly easy to manage your email inbox.

Now email has become a chore. What was once used strictly as a communications tool has now become the central place from which work is received, managed and delegated in organizations. So in addition to having more emails to deal with (the recent reported average is 200 emails a day), your email inbox is a storehouse of “to-dos”, “to-reads” and items of “indeterminate status.” The real problem for users and the companies they work for is that those important tasks are often getting missed because they get buried in the daily flood of emails and email programs alone do not have sufficient capability to effectively manage tasks.

Why Email is Not a Task Management Tool

When we made YuDoMail available to beta testers we uncovered seven specific issues that users experience with task management in email.

1. Tracking: Users find it difficult to keeping track of lots of concurrent actions: One’s own to-dos and to-dos one expects from others.

2. Prioritizing: Limited capability to mark things as important or outstanding amongst the less important items.

3. Managing: Email alone does not make it easy to manage activity extending over time or keep track of threads of activity and  discussions.

4. Monitoring: No way to monitor deadlines and reminders, which may be associated with particular messages or other content, and there is no closed-loop process.

5. Organizing: Difficult to collate related items (e.g., an extended thread) and associated files and links.

6. Reporting: A task oriented overview, at a glance, rather than scrolling around and inspecting folders, is non-existent.

7. Analyzing: No ability to view request volumes, outstanding requests and turnaround times at the individual and team level, as well as important metrics to show trends and support root cause analysis.

The exciting outcome for our beta testers is that they were able to overcome all of these issues using YuDoMail. For the first time teams had complete visibility into the request status, for themselves and for their team, to drive accountability and improve productivity. If you’re interested in giving YuDoMail a test drive, click here. If you’re already a YuDoMail users, we would love to hear your task management stories and tips.

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Traditional Email is Like Old Landlines.

Traditional email as we know it is one of the most useful (and overly used) tools we have in business. It is useful because it allows us to send messages, tasks and information in a reliable and stable way. It is a generally accepted and popular communication medium between businesses and everyone knows how to use it; and despite naysayers and the rise of social media, statistics show that every year more and more emails are sent. In 2013 more than 100 billion business emails were sent and received EVERY DAY. By 2017 this will rise to an estimated 132 billion emails daily, according to The Radicati Group.

However, email’s ubiquity is also its downfall. Because it is so easy (and un-structured), it is often over-used without much regard for the recipients (we all want OUR points and requests to come across) and there is no transparency or accountability, which means we all suffer under its yolk of inefficiency. So traditional email is a bit like the traditional landline phone. It was a game changing technology when it first came out, but its success soon created bottlenecks and needed to be improved in order to cope with its success. For landlines it was first the mobile phone (we all remember Nokia) and then there were smart phones (i.e. the era of iPhones and Samsung Galaxies). For email, what is the next generation?

The “Smart Phone” Version of Email

The world has moved on from conventional landline and snail mail solutions. We now live in an era of high transaction volumes, large multinational organisations, big data, automation and communication. So our preferred b2b communication method of email needs to change and adapt for this. And this is not just about handling volume –systems can handle that. It is the people that can’t and then suffer from it.

That is why businesses are looking for the “smart phone” version of email. Smart Email where emails are grouped together, have clear owners, routed to the correct place, are accounted for and can be reported on so that people can be productive and spend their time on value adding activities, not “reading and filing email”.

There are a few options for smarter email. For individuals, check out Mailbox or Xobni. For SMEs check out Gmail’s new tabs, Zendesk, Mail Pilot, AtTask, Workshare or Help Scout. For medium or larger companies, your options are developing custom workflow platforms using software such as Savvion, Tibco or Pega, or using corporate social media tools such as Yammer, Salesforce.com’s Chatter or blueKiwi, or an “email workflow out the box” solution for individual teams or organisation wide use such as YuDoMail.

The key thing to take away is: Email volumes are not going to go down. In fact I predict the use of email is going to continue to increase over the next few years, purely because more and more people are coming online every day and more businesses going digital. So the business community best prepare for this avalanche of email coming their way. They better get “smart email”.

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