Take Command

When I look at my 14 year old daughter, I see the future.

And that future has no email.

According to Natalie, email is for old people. Her preferred forms of communication are texting and Facebook. She always has an email account but only to register and maintain her password on web pages and social media sites. Other than retrieving forgotten passwords, she totally ignores her email.

"Did you get the spreadsheet?"
"When did you send it?"
"A couple of weeks ago, by email."
"Okay, I got it.  It says March Forecast on it."
"That's the old one.  I sent a new one in June."
"Hang on, let me search my hard drive."

Sound familiar? If you use email to distribute documents, you have had this conversation. In a previous blog entry, I talk about the importance of collaboration. Let me talk specifically about one solution. It's called Google Apps. The price? $50 per year, per user.

It floors me to see companies still without any collaborative or knowledge sharing solution. Instead of a document and knowledge base, they use email as a big, messy filing system. Marketing collateral, proposals, sales presentations, spreadsheets - they're either on somebody's hard drive or in someone's email. Need that knock-out  sales presentation from three months ago? Start hunting. And when you find it, make sure it's the right version.

Using email and hard drives for document storage is inconvenient, costly and can even land you in legal trouble.