The Costs...

of Unmanaged Email

If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find something in them to hang him. - Cardinal Richelieu

There are enormous costs associated with uncontrolled corporate email assets. Liabilities from unintended and / or embarrassing disclosure aside, the costs associated with electronic discovery of email are enormous. Moreover, these costs are only increasing as the number and size of messages sent by each employee continues to grow.

Email Costs: Legal Discovery Paper Output

One way to evaluate the cost of email discovery is to consider the paper output involved. Legal scholars Jeff Flax and Daryl Teshima report that a typical corporate lawsuit involves one gigabyte of data per person, or 33 boxes of documents. While filtering and indexing can help, each box, Flax and Teneshi say, takes roughly a day for an attorney to review.

Email Costs: Per Message

Another way to evaluate cost is on a per message basis. According to companies that specialize in answering email discovery requests, the cost of identification, conversion, listing/indexing, imaging, copying, reviewing for accuracy, scanning for attorney/client privileged information, shipping and storage can cost $10 per message or more, though $0.50 - $2 is more typical.

Now consider a company with a few thousand email users, each sending fifteen messages per day - a conservative figure according to many market analysts. A single discovery request for two or three years worth of email may involve tens of millions of messages. The cost of collecting these messages and having them reviewed can easily run into six and seven figures.

Email Costs: Embarrassment, Loss of Trade Secrets and Brand Reputation

When the damages resulting from embarrassment, loss of trade secrets, false interpretation of casual messages as "smoking guns," and reductions in a company's market capitalization are added to the cost of discovery, even $10 per message doesn't begin to cover the total costs of email-related litigation.

Email Costs: Impact on Your Company's Stock Price

Casual email messages can also dramatically affect the market capitalization of public companies. In March, 2001, Cerner Corporation CEO Neal Patterson sent a message to about 400 managers chastising them for failing to make demands on the company's 3100 employees. The tone of the message was harsh,and after it was posted to a Yahoo message board for investors, the stock price dropped by 22 percent in a three day period and the message was the subject of a lengthy article in the New York Times.

Start controlling your costs associated with email today. Email us now at sales@omniva.com or call us (toll free) at 1(877)723-3624.