Since the 70s, e-mail has become more and more important within our professional and private life. From “a must have” and very easy tool for communicating, it has turned into an invading tool that frankly speaking, placed under the fingers of some (lots of) people, is less and less effective. Thanks to mobile devices, users might see the end of this annoying “unread” amount of messages.

As always, it all started with good intentions. First meant for large academic or military networks, e-mail got really started for common people in the 90s when the Internet took off. Some 20 years later, beside spam or phishing, e-mail got invading in all private and corporate mailboxes.

In 2011, an employee sent or received an average of 112 e-mails per day swallowing 28% of his working day. Where is the limit of e-mail messages a corporate user can manage per day? How much time can an employee spend with e-mail per day? Or at what point do these messages become irrelevant or get simply ignored except if they come from your hierarchy?

Existing and future e-mail clients will answer none of those questions. Solutions to this growing problem will come from another system, another way of communicating and it has already started. Let’s have a look at some paradigms that are changing:

• E-mail clients have been dominated by Outlook until 2011 with 27% market share. But in 2012, thanks to 560 million iOS devices sold since 2007, a new e-mail client called Mail from Apple has emerged and it is leading with 35% market share.
• More that 95% of American teenagers have access to Internet but 39% of them have no e-mail. Despite of that, 76% of them use daily a social network to message friends.
• Large corporations are taking initiatives to cut e-mail usage and it is not easy. Atos for example, a company with 80’000 workers over 42 countries, expects to achieve “zero e-mail” by 2014.

Of course, e-mail is not going to disappear anytime soon. However, limits of this 40 years old communication technology have clearly been reached. It is time to implement a new communication strategy within your company and with your partners thanks to new tools.

Interaction, transparency, efficiency and effectiveness are common goals when it comes to share information across a company or organization. E-mails are no longer a way to fulfill those achievements. Thanks to a world that is always more connected, mobile devices will play a major role in this revolution as Apps will integrate a new communication system.

Is your company ready to abandon e-mail for something more effective and collaborative?