IBM Survey Reveals that 21% of email users would happily consider applications to complement email
April 12 2011
Today in the UK (totally coincidentally with my arrival in London this morning), IBM is issuing a press release highlighting a local market survey of 2000 adults regarding email usage. The survey finds that 21% would happily consider applications to complement email, but only 14% are aware of social collaboration tools. The release goes on to establish IBM thinking about the future of email and activity streams, and quotes local IBM UK guru Darren Adams on the opportunities and challenges in the email and social business markets.
Full release follows:
London, 12th April, 2011: A recent online survey of over 2,000 GB adults, carried out by YouGov on behalf of IBM (NYSE: IBM), has found that over a quarter (28%) of those surveyed feel that at least 20% of the time they spend on email during their working week is wasted dealing with irrelevant messages, chasing people for responses and resending emails. 44% of the respondents received more than 20 emails a day and 4% received in excess of 100 a day, the equivalent of over 35,000 emails a year.
More than one in five people (21%) would happily consider applications to complement email. When asked how strongly they agree or disagree with the statement: “I am aware of social collaboration packages and their business benefits, and would happily use them at work if they were available,” only 14% of email users agreed.
Respondents also raised annoyances about junk mail, advertising and online scams and how impersonal email was.
Darren Adams, Portfolio Manager, Messaging and Collaboration, IBM UK & Ireland, said, “The results of this survey are very revealing. We all know that spam and on-line scams are issues for email users the world over, but other difficulties such as uncertainty as to whether an email and its attachment have been read, has the right person received it and does the reply actually answer the question asked are all areas that can be addressed by linking your email to social collaboration solutions such as IBM Connections. It will allow people to use email in new and much more effective ways, both at home and at work.”
Email is undeniably a critical element of everyday working life. With IDC, a global industry analyst firm, estimating that there will be 970 million business and 950 million consumer email users by 2014, it is not going away soon.
However, email is definitely evolving from a static one-to-one exchange and is fast becoming the inbox for the social framework, allowing people to use email more effectively to communicate and coordinate information from other sources like social networks. This facility enables people to address many of the existing difficulties associated with email by expanding traditional functionality with complimentary tools that people are already familiar with from using social networks.
Effective communication should be important as 35% of online Brits who use email have colleagues who are not based in the same location. 12% are working in a different workplace to over half of their workmates.
Adams continues, “Social collaboration offers great opportunities for business and allows users in disparate locations to easily collaborate and ensure they are reaching out to the right people with the required expertise and knowledge. While the business benefits are clear, we know that we need to raise the profile of social collaboration in the market place - the survey showed us that 37% of people in the UK are unaware of the benefits of being part of a social business."
Post a Comment
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Thomas | 4/12/2011 10:06:29 AM
I don't understand the survey results? What about the other 79%?
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Roger Whitehead http://www.office-futures.net/blog | 4/12/2011 11:21:56 AM
Two questions for Mr Lynch:
1. How can a survey, such as IBM's, that quotes percentage results be other than quantitative?
2. What's the source of the "Quantitative facts" you quote?
Roger
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John | 4/12/2011 5:31:50 PM
It is true that surveys, numbers that come from them and conclusions reached from surveys is always biased by the interpreter of the results. Therefore criticizing what conclusions were drawn by IBM is biased in itself. It is fair to say that the results concluded by a survey do not necessarily reflect what is happening at a specific enterprise.
“We have engaged with a number of groups very recently at IBM, in a pre-sales situation where one would think that this social collaboration model would result in better, more coordinated and more crisp sales presentations to business units, and each time the disparate resources in the room during these presentations have been poorly coordinated, not at all in sync, disjointed, and have resulted in very poor pre-sales presentations, with multiple 7-figure opportunities on the table. From a customer's perspective, if IBM's internal embrace of social software is actually happening, and was supposed to improve IBM's performance along these lines, we have seen no evidence of that”
To blame social software for IBM’s failure in sales presentations may not be a valid assumption. It may be that IBM is (in my experience) poor at selling and marketing if not in general then in specific categories of software such as Domino, Lotus Notes and Social Software. Many people (not all) have complained to IBM about their inability to “tell a good story” about their products, specifically Domino and Social Software (check out many of the Domino blogs an search for “marketing”).
Email (depending upon the specific culture) is cultural to that environment. Although general trends might be able to be recognized over a large enough population, concluding that the general trend applies to a specific instance can always be contradicted by a specific instance.
“…the survey showed us that 37% of people in the UK are unaware of the benefits of being part of a social business.”
The above statement has to be understood with the assumption that the writer’s perceived benefits would benefit everyone else. If you accept the assumption, then the statistic “may” have benefit to you. However, if you disagree with the assumption, then the statistic is invalid.
Surveys always have assumptions built into them.
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Steve Medure | 4/13/2011 2:34:37 PM
It's obvious and apparent that the latest buzz word is "social". If we were all playing BullShi# bingo we'd all be winners. Every time I read blogs on bleedyellow.com, or planetlotus.org about getting social I just about want to puke. It's almost like we are all on the set of Sesame Street and the word of the day is "social".
How many millions of dollars are being spent on marketing Let's Get Social by IBM when those dollars could be spent on developing a solid product. The Lotus Notes 8.x.x track record hasn't been stellar and it's very apparent that the development area needs some serious funding.
Now go get social and build a better mouse trap!
Email is not evolving from a static one on one exchange, in fact, it is getting more private, and less social in our company.
I certainly understand IBM's desire to market and make profits in areas where there is not flat revenues, ie social tools vs email servers, (which is obviously Ed and Darren's job to some degree) but the real facts in terms of how email is used, by thousands of users all over the world in our growing global enterprise, reveal that the vast majority of email users utilize email for private, one on one communication, almost all the time. Social tools of any kind have little relevance in that context. The marketing spin herein by IBM based on self-serving qualitative surveys quoted above may be interesting to some, but results from the specific question "than one in five people (21%) would happily consider applications to complement email" are so overly vague and poorly worded (in terms of survey design) to allow anyone to draw any kind of wishy-washy conclusion that may serve their view of the world. Far from persuasive marketing fluff that tends to undermine credibility.
Quantitative facts about the use of email paint a different picture here.
In March, 2011, with sample size approaching 10 million messages, just under 90% of all email communications involve 1 recipient. That number is higher than it was 3 years ago. That is private, one on one communication by definition, and is private for many important, long-standing and unchanging business communication reasons. I'd bet that profile is similar in many large businesses, including IBM, despite a seeming embrace of Connections internally at IBM.
In just one month, the volume of valid email (after spam scrubbing etc) here increased by 30%, despite a widely used, and successful IM service in place.
As far as social tools allowing great opportunities for business users in disparate locations to easily collaborate and reach out to others to get better informed etc, if IBM itself is any kind of example of that producing better business results(as we've been told is so since at least 2008), our direct experience with multiple business units at IBM successfully doing that is quite contrary to our actual experience. We have engaged with a number of groups very recently at IBM, in a pre-sales situation where one would think that this social collaboration model would result in better, more coordinated and more crisp sales presentations to business units, and each time the disparate resources in the room during these presentations have been poorly coordinated, not at all in sync, disjointed, and have resulted in very poor pre-sales presentations, with multiple 7-figure opportunities on the table. From a customer's perspective, if IBM's internal embrace of social software is actually happening, and was supposed to improve IBM's performance along these lines, we have seen no evidence of that.