The volume of emails bombarding corporate inboxes has become the number one concern among enterprise messaging managers and risks affecting staff productivity, knowledge management and compliance efforts, according to email experts at this week’s Inbox Outbox event in London.

Mike Osterman, founder of analyst Osterman Research argued that messaging costs organisations an often underestimated sum of roughly £10-15 per user per month and so enterprise systems need to be future proofed against failure.

“The number one problem for messaging managers is the growth in storage; it’s a critical issue and one that’s growing,” he argued. “Good messaging archiving will solve most of the top ten problems but most organisations don’t use true archiving – they mistake back-up for archiving.”

Osterman added that IT teams need to put in place more effective email monitoring solutions to ensure they minimise downtime, potential staff productivity losses and revenue hits.

Also at the event, Monica Seeley, founder of email consultancy Mesmo Consultancy, advised enterprise teams including HR, IT, senior management, marketing and end users to work closer together on email volume problems, or risk security breaches, stressed staff and reduced productivity.

She argued HR teams need to be involved in order to set policies and incorporate dismissal procedures where necessary, while involving end users can be beneficial in “helping them to get you to decide on best practice”.

“Email best practice is a combination of technology, culture, processes and people,” she argued. “For HR and IT this is a golden opportunity to solve what is for most organisations quite a big problem and create real business benefits.”