With an increasing demand for fast-paced business environments, the trend toward digital communication becomes more prevalent. The email vs. paper memos debate is common among organizations that are starting to realize the benefits of achieving workplace efficiency through new business communication methods. In this post, one may argue that emails take the upper hand in describing the many ways business communication and efficiency can improve in the years to come.
The Transition from Paper Memos to Email
For years, organizations have been using paper memos to deliver important information on a regular basis. However, as times changed with the ever-increasing digital transformation, email communication became the undisputed leader in information sharing for most businesses. The reason for the overwhelming shift is simple, as the benefits of email over paper memos in terms of speed, accessibility, and cost are plain to see. The most recent example of this shift can be seen in a prominent Fortune 100 company known as IBM. The corporation released a case study on its strategic move toward email communication that serves to illustrate the general benefits for the greater business community. In the 2000s, IBM realized that their reliance on paper memos was costing the company valuable work hours. This led to the decision to shift toward email communication that provides the organization with a significant level of operational efficiency. By 2023, the plan is for 85% of all internal communications to happen through email and other digital channels. Throughout the years, the need for such a switch is only proven by the many benefits of email over paper memos. Some of the most crucial ones include the three points listed below.
Key Advantages of Email Communication
Speed of Communication: Emails allow a quicker transfer of information. Message flow instantly and do not require the time to be delivered into the hands of employees in selection locations.
Cost Efficiency: The current methods of printing and storing paper memos can be heavy on an organization’s budget. The allocation of such savings to other areas is much more useful for business growth and development.
Document Management: The system can be used to store and easily access stored communications. When a particular message needs to be referenced, it is easier to search the email servers than to pour through a filing cabinet.
Remote Work Communication: In our increasingly digitized age, email is a crucial tool to maintain communication between members of a widely distributed team.
Professional Correspondence: Email is generally viewed as more professional than a paper memo because it can be written to look clear and neat by being typed on the computer. They typically have fewer spelling errors and often have a formal attachment to be read as well.
Integration With Communication Tools: Many modern email systems also integrate chat-style messaging between users, stationery, and calendar use, as well as other important tools. By generalizing this one system, an organization has significantly streamlined all of its needed internal communication tools.
Future Projections for Email Communication
Emails will only become more and more common as a necessity for modern communications. By 2025, the number of emails sent and received each day is expected to be over 347 billion. The following will be significant influencers:
Advances in Technology: The current functions of email systems will be improved and added onto, with further development of advanced features like machine-sorted messages. Automated systems may prioritize the messages that appear at the top of the list.
Increasing Demand for Remote Work Tools: Email is a current remote communication tool, and it will be more necessary when working from home becomes more common.
Integration Into New Platforms: If anything, email is becoming integrated into several other features. All of these communications run off of an email platform that can be organized in a similar way.
Growing Importance of Data Security: Considering the growing concerns over data privacy, secure email communication will be a priority for the majority of organizations. New security features will be introduced to prevent sensitive information from being exchanged.
Focus on Effective Communication: As businesses come to realize the overwhelming importance of effective communication for achieving organizational goals, email will continue to be one of the most commonly used means for transmitting information within the company.
Training and Development: A higher emphasis will be placed on training employees to employ effective communication methods. To guarantee that email exchange is the opposite of incoherent and lengthy, employees will need to ensure their messages are short, clear, and to the point.
Consumer Preferences: In the future, the consumers’ penchant for receiving prompt responses and effective communication will only grow. To ensure that the needs for improved communication by consumers are met, businesses will adjust their internal processes and communication strategies.
Challenges of Paper Memos in Modern Workplaces
Although there is a range of significant advantages that can be considered when making an argument in favor of email communication, it is crucial to mention the problems that the still common paper memos trigger in modern organizations. In fact, the increasing number of firms has been realizing the adverse effects of the use of a paper memo as a means of in-office communication.
Time Consumption: Making, printing, and distributing paper memos take too long, putting a considerable burden on the staff.
Physical Location: For people who are at different organizational spots, a paper memo would be, in fact, useless.
Feedback: The process is neither fast nor efficient since collecting the responses will require, first, ordering the members of the staff to pass the documents to one another.
Storage: In the age of electronic documentation, physical files are becoming a true burden.
Risk of Loss: Paper memos are easily misplaceable.
Inflexibility: A paper-based memo cannot be altered easily as it is already printed. Using digital communication, one can edit the message and update the necessary information.
Environmental Impact: Frequent use of paper when creating paper-based memos increases the amount of waste, which can have a negative environmental impact. Many businesses prefer to follow certain environmentally related principles, so now many companies and organizations refuse to use paper-based memos.
The Future of Business Communication
Businesses do not remain static and develop together with the innovations emerging in the environment. Business communication is an essential part of every organization, and effective ways to implement it should be paid the necessary level of attention. The development of business communication and the choices businesses make in this regard have a significant effect on the corporate culture that will be shaped within an organization.
Most businesses will allocate considerable investment in innovative technologies that foster better and more effective communication, implementing various software and tools capable of transforming their current communication setup. More specifically, by 2026, more than 75% of businesses worldwide will employ digital solutions and implement an end-to-end communication strategy accordingly. The development of business communication will be accompanied by several significant trends.
Unified Communication Platforms: Firstly, businesses will use a range of unified communication platforms that will be integral to email, messaging, and video communication.
Employee Training: Secondly, companies will pay more attention to training their staff to ensure they have the required skills to communicate effectively on the digital level, with every message being clear, professional, and to the point.
Collaboration Platforms: Thirdly, improved collaboration platforms will promote more effective teamwork and information sharing.
Data-Driven Decisions: Fourthly, data and insights as to the Code-of-Conduct compliance will be becoming more significant in shaping various decision-making processes of organizations, enabling them to fine-tune the existing communication strategy to increase its efficiency.
Remote Work Solutions: Fifthly, as the development of remote work proceeds, companies are keen on introducing digital solutions for ensuring their staff will be using them more often to keep in touch with other employees.
Personalized Communication: Finally, businesses will need to ensure they can personalize the ways of communication with employees and partners in order to ensure their engagement with the given business or organization.
Greater Transparency: Businesses will achieve transparent communication, which in turn will further develop a trusted relationship between employees and firms.
