E-mail has made our business lives easier, but it's also given us a disease I like to call "short-term e-memory."

We shoot off a quick reply and move on to the next message in our inbox.

The last e-mail is practically forgotten, in part because of the speed and flippancy attached to e-mail writing.

We can write two-word replies in e-mails, a complete reversal of the attention we paid to letter-writing back when lined paper was all the rage.

Illustration by Adrian Hayles, Business Edge
Financial services company Morgan Stanley found out the hard way in U.S. court that e-mails can make or break a case should a lawsuit go before a judge.

As long as we suffer from short-term e-memory, we risk our own business hide.

Forget spam and personal messages unsuitable for the workplace, the danger lies in viewing e-mail as a casual communication system, rather than a harbinger of high-stakes litigation that could fell a company in one swoop.

Say the words "e-mail retention" to someone at financial services firm Morgan Stanley and look for a wince of pain.

Earlier this year, the company lost a $1.45 billion US judgment in a lawsuit by billionaire Ronald Perelman.

The judge had ordered Morgan Stanley to produce e-mails relating to the case, but the firm could only shrug and admit its e-mail retention policy was so poor that no evidence would surface. Morgan Stanley is appealing the decision.

Granted, your company will likely not face this high-stakes litigation, but a business lesson rippled across the world: Non-compliance is not an option. Archive e-mail messages, because you never know when you might need them.

It's an often-ignored topic because IT departments are already swamped with filter, firewalls and faulty PC problems.

Wishing the problem away, though, will not do anyone any good.

After all, e-mail usage is only growing: The research company IDC has predicted the average number of e-mails sent each day worldwide will hit 60 billion in 2006, almost double the 31 billion that were sent in 2002.

With this continuing deluge, businesses - no matter their size - must take an e-mail retention policy from the back-burner to front and centre.

Consider these statistics. About 27 per cent of U.S. companies offer e-mail retention/ deletion training, according to Nancy Flynn, executive director of the ePolicy Institute.

A recent study by the University of St. Louis found that 36 per cent of small-to mid-sized businesses aren't yet archiving e-mail.

Why should you care about archiving? A report by the Enterprise Strategy Group found that as much as 75 per cent of a company's intellectual property is contained in e-mail messages and attachments.

Canadian businesses shouldn't wait for a lawsuit to hit the fan. According to IDC Canada, close to one third of Canadian companies are planning changes to IT systems this year to comply with regulatory requirements.

Those laws include an amendment to the Investment Dealers Association of Canada bylaw 29.7, requiring securities firms to retain all correspondence, including e-mail, for five years.

In the U.S., the SEC's Rule 17a mandates e-mail retention for up to seven years.

Organizations that win in court are often the ones that can examine their messages quickly and accurately and prove that they are fully co-operating. A head-in-the-sand approach is amateurish in today's business environment.

With all the software and archiving solutions available, companies can no longer claim ignorance.

They can learn about the pitfalls and then take a three-pronged approach.

First, implement an e-mail retention policy that outlines how long e-mails will be stored, what system will be used and which personnel are in charge.

Second, educate employees about the policy and appoint several knowledgeable staff to lead the training. (This sounds daunting for smaller companies, especially ones with few technical staff, but it's like insurance - better safe than sorry).

Third, forget the backup tapes of yesteryear and choose a software package that is reputable and comprehensive.

One Canadian company offering this service is Fortiva, whose archiving & compliance suite is intended to help businesses manage and archive e-mail.

Archived data is encrypted in transit and storage and is accessible through a web browser interface.

"Businesses should assume their e-mail will one day need to appear," says Paul Chen, Fortiva's CEO. "This is no different than a paper trail, but it's more difficult to track the trail of e-mail data without a solution."

You might now be wondering: "If I sent a Happy Birthday message to my aunt through my workplace e-mail, will that be archived?" Chen says be wary. "Labour lawyers agree employees should be aware that there's usually no such thing as a private message when using company e-mail."

So, whether it's a love letter or a business letter, that mid-afternoon e-mail can be stored for all to see years down the road.

Finding a personal e-mail is a reality for storage solutions that also implements indexing. While storing e-mail is a practical no-brainer, indexing is an option for the enterprising business.

When e-mail was in its infancy, finding a message only took several minutes with a Search function.

Today's swamp of e-mails means indexing is crucial to fully enjoying the benefits of an archive.

What if a customer complained she never received an e-mailed receipt from a purchase order?

A prepared business would have archived that e-mail, created a data tag to identify the sender and recipient and performed a context-based analysis of that message.

Pulling that e-mail out of the pile would only take a few minutes if a thorough index is in place.

Finally, an attitudinal shift must ripple to all sectors of the business community in order for e-mail retention to become a priority.

No longer should smaller businesses think: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Think how Morgan Stanley is paying for that misconception. And if short-term e-memory is plaguing your company, realize that instant communication has its price.

(David Silverberg can be reached at silverberg@businessedge.ca)