Email Clients Versus Collaboration Tools

In this constantly evolving world we find ourselves in -- from getting up-to-the-minute news in the blink of an eye on our mobile devices to encountering increasingly integrated software apps -- it can be quite overwhelming for the average small town business owner when making decisions about which apps to use to run his/her business.  What if you pick an app that steals your contacts or puts malware on your applications?  What if you purchase an app that you don't understand how to use and manage because you got sold by fancy marketing PR that was thrown at you when you clicked on the website?

So, let me try and simplify the decision-making process a couple notches down for an area that most businesses require to run effectively - Communication.  If you are a business owner, how do you want to exchange information with your Customers, Employees and Vendors?  Does your business typically rely on on-line interactions the majority of the time versus verbally or in person?  Well, if it does, stay on this page because I will be discussing some Linux-based Email clients versus Collaboration tools.

So, you've made a plan to switch over to a Linux desktop with LibreOffice, what next?  You need an Outlook replacement, right?  Answer:  It depends.  The reason why I say "it depends" is that technology has evolved to the point that Collaboration tools include email and other additional communication functionality.  Do you really need an email client if a Collaboration tool has email and more?  Do you really need email if your work processes rely more on updates or exchanges that can be better handled within a Collaboration tool?

Let me give you some examples:

Example #1:  Your firm is a bakery.  You order your own ingredients and make your own baked goods within your small shop.  If you buy most of your ingredients by going to Costco, Sam's Club or a local grocery store, do you really need email to run your business?

Example #2:  Your firm is an Engineering firm that designs semi conductor components for the telecommunications industry.  Your customers interact with your Designers and Engineers through meetings and reviewing drawings.  If most of your work processes revolve around updating the status of the design process for a component until final approval by the customer, do you really need email to run your business?

For the first example, you would probably think email was not really necessary since you do most of the tasks yourself, supplying inventory, baking and interacting with customers in person.  For the second example, you might be tempted to say you really need the email so that your designers can attach drawings to emails they send to customers to review.

What if I were to tell you that there are feature rich tools within the Linux ecosystem that could handle enterprise-wide transactions and processes in a collaborative manner?  These tools consist of the following on a single platform:

• Information sharing and CRM


• Project, task and event management


• Online file server and document management


• Data exchange and synchronization


• Incident tracking


• Website content management


• Email integrated with calendar management


• Chatting

The above is what is displayed on Egroupware's site.

Just think.  If most of your processes revolved around approving drawings with internal and external resources, why not handle those processes within a Collaboration tool such as Egroupware or Group-Office?  You save the drawing one time into the tool's repository database.  Any comments, calendar events, resources or other updates would be associated with that drawing generating a history of the transactions related to that drawing.  Why there's even version control, tracking the changes to the design as it is approved by all parties throughout the design life-cycle.

Now wouldn't that be a better approach than exchanging emails with attachments back and forth, where the attachments could clog up the memory of the email server, requiring frequent system administration to free up memory resources for storage?  With exchanging emails, it's very easy to lose or find the right email when you are sending it to someone who gets 300 emails a day.  However, with one of the Collaboration tools above, the history of revisions and approvals for each drawing is kept intact in one place where all resources, whether employee or customer, can look up information related to that same drawing as long as they all have a login account to the tool.

If you decide that your business really does need email, there are two Linux email clients that come to mind:  Thunderbird and Evolution.

I'll go into those two in more detail in a later post but for now, just giving you some food for thought.

 

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