SMBs Need Email Archiving Too, Five Common Mistakes to Avoid

Increasing regulation and litigation mean that email archiving is becoming essential for companies of all sizes and in all industries—not just for finance, health care, and government. Deborah Galea, COO and co-founder of Red Earth Software recently shared with me five common mistakes that SMBs make when thinking about email archiving

Mistake One: Thinking small companies do not need an email archiving solution. Civil litigation can hit any company at any time, and if you cannot provide emails during the eDiscovery process, you could get hit with major financial sanctions. It’s also important to archive emails in the event of any sort of employee dispute, such as a layoff or a firing. Protect your company and make sure to have an email retention policy in place.

Mistake Two: Putting off implementing an email archiving system to save on costs. Although there are certainly a lot of expensive email archiving systems out there, more cost effective solutions are now becoming available. Cost is really no excuse anymore for not having an email archiving solution in place.

Mistake Three: Having only one employee knowledgeable about the system. Employees come and go and you don’t want only one person, such as a lone IT manager, knowing how to update and troubleshoot the system. Make sure all employees are aware of the email retention policy and make sure more than one person is able to use it effectively.

Mistake Four: Not having a data map. It is important to know what kind of electronic data your company has, where it is located and how to access it. Any company, large and small, should have an eDiscovery data map (view sample data map) to ease eDiscovery requests and to help meet retention guidelines.

Mistake Five: Not regularly testing or updating the system.  An email archiving solution is useless if it has any downtime or is out-of-date. Make sure that the system is spot-checked regularly and remember that this is not a “build it and forget it” project.

As Galea notes: “Even just a few years ago, many companies had no idea what email archiving entailed. Fast forward a few years and most companies know that they need to have an email archiving solution in place.”

Whether you are moving from knowing you need an email archiving system to actually implementing one or if you already have one, these five common mistakes are good review for us all.