E-mail is undoubtedly the primary communications tool. The telephone still has a role to play, but our electronic friend has usurped it. Our reliance on the send button is highlighted by a recent IDC report that predicts more than 60 billion e-mails will be sent every day by 2006.

In terms of information overload, a crisis surely looms. It is an issue for the boardroom, one would presume. But, in practice, seemingly not. Gartner issued a report in February claiming that few firms are giving e-mail management the attention it deserves. Bandwidth requirements are doubling every six months, essentially due to e-mail, but the implications are given little thought. Gartner warns that too many senior decision-makers are turning a blind eye to the potential problems caused by e-mail and are failing to allocate budget or human resource, because they do not understand the risks or obligations facing them.

The volume of non-business related e-mail has been well documented. In fact, two-thirds of e-mail that goes through corporate gateways is unrelated to work. The IDC report also states that an alarming increase in the volume of spam is hindering staff from accessing time-sensitive e-mail and affects overall productivity.

This is confirmed by research conducted by MessageLabs, which claims that in January 2002, one in every 199 UK e-mails was spam. By June, this figure had risen to one in 36 and by November the same year it stood at one in eight. Without question, the combination of spam, personal e-mail and business e-mail has created a volume of information that should be of concern to the board.

Interestingly, Liverpool City Council introduced a 'non e-mail' day last year when it realised that its 6,000 computer-based staff sent each other more than 40,000 messages a day. It was perceived that an internal e-mail-free day would liberate staff and increase productivity. I am not advocating this approach and whether the pilot was successful or not is immaterial as far as I am concerned. My view is that e-mail is here and it has improved the way we do business. But we do have to accept that there are drawbacks, most notably the amount of unstructured information that it creates. This is a problem, but it is manageable.

The first step in solving the problem is not to complicate the issue. Too many budget holders get excited by complex knowledge management (KM) systems, rather than taking the time to consider more practical e-mail management solutions. An integrated content management package will naturally solve document management issues, including e-mail, but many standalone KM offerings do not tackle the e-mail problem, which can be an expensive and illogical oversight.

An organisation may have numerous reasons why it has not yet implemented an e-mail management strategy, but when you consider that 70%-80% of content in your average company is carried by e-mail, the shortcomings of this 'soon to be in place' strategy becomes apparent. Unfortunately, e-mail is not treated as a system and is not centrally managed even though it is a mission-critical application. The bottom line for companies is to create manageable, searchable archives that comply with legal requirements. If they do not, they will be left with valuable information that becomes inaccessible and redundant.

Moreover, when you take into account that companies are leaving some of their most sensitive information on a hacker-susceptible part of the network, the argument for an e-mail management system increases.

You could argue that e-mail management is a cultural issue and employees do not see e-mail archiving as part of their job. A fair point, but it is the responsibility of the board to insist on procedures that culminate in individuals taking responsibility for information. This benefits the company because important information becomes more widely available.

The validity of archiving e-mails also has a legal rationale. If a dispute arises, a case can be damaged if e-mailed documents cannot be retrieved. Arguments for comprehensive information management solutions seem common sense and will have those responsible for IT nodding in approval. However, new working practices cost money – the downside as far as CFOs and CEOs are concerned. But the business logic supporting a company-wide e-mail management solution is very strong. A company benefits from an e-mail archiving system, time savings and, of course, legal obligations are met.

Not all systems are introduced to 'make work'; sometimes they fulfil a key business requirement and a little investment can bring considerable reward.

Chris Toole is chief technology officer at Calvis.