If you are currently using Outlook (or any e-mail program for that matter) with what is known as an Internet Mail or POP account, and you have a need to collaborate or share information with either co-workers in the same company or any other people that you are frequently in contact with, and you are not using Exchange Server, then this article will definitely be of interest to you.

Even for those who are currently using Outlook with Exchange Server, a Managed Exchange Service can bring significant productivity and cost benefits, especially where you have multiple distributed Exchange Servers and are struggling to synchronise data between these servers.

Likewise, read further if you are currently experiencing some of the following problems:

·           You don’t have a central Calendar from which you can co-ordinate everyone’s diaries

You need a central calendar where everyone’s appointments are “visible” in the sense that if you need to schedule an appointment with them you will know if they’re available or not without having to call or contact them.

·           You don’t have one common Contacts List

Everyone is maintaining details of your company’s clients, partners, suppliers etc. in their individual Outlook Contacts folder, which means duplication of effort on everyone’s part and incomplete information for those people not keeping their contact lists up to date.

·           You can’t keep track of who is responsible for what activities

If several of you are working on a common project or a common customer, and different members of the team are responsible for performing various tasks, then it is impossible to know which tasks have been worked on or completed by each person again without regular contact or meetings.

·           You don’t have a central document repository

You are working in different offices and don’t have one common place to store all documents that everyone is collectively updating. The net result is that your are constantly e-mailing these documents around to each team member, who then all end up with different versions if multiple people are simultaneously updating the same document.

·           You don’t have visibility of e-mails received/sent

You are working in conjunction with other team members but have no way of all being able to see important e-mail correspondence sent and received to common contacts, without necessarily all being CC’d in on every e-mail.

·           You can’t take important data/information away with you “offline”

You don’t have a way of synchronising the “public” information at your office onto your notebook or PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) so that you can view and update it when you’re “on the road”, and then resynchronise your changes back to the shared database when you return (or reconnect remotely) to the office.