Forum Discussion
Communication Revolution
In CIOs Futurecast research, sponsored by Microsoft, fewer than half (45%) of survey respondents believe email will remain the primary form of communication for the foreseeable future.
Do you think email will remain the primary form of communication? Or will new forms like video conferencing and chat-based workspaces become more common?
2 Replies
In my opinion email will hang about for a while to come. The introduction of Office 365 Group 'conversations' in Outlook (and also the O365 Groups app) is I think an interesting way to help email-addicted users transition from one-to-one emails to Yammer-like group conversations, with the added bonus of having documents related to the group also appearing in the same (Outlook) application.
People will, however, still cling to email based communication for a while to come, especially in one-to-one settings where the content requires or lends itself more to a document-like structure rather than a short-chat type structure (like Twitter, Whatsapp etc).
The loss of documentary-based communication (whether in paper or electronic) is causing concern for the records management community, which worries about keeping and being able to access evidence of business activities and transactions in some form of context. This is not helped by leaders who communicate via instant messages (including inaccessible encrypted messages) or tweets.
My prediction is that email will live on quite strongly for another 15 years, by which time alternative communication methods will have become the norm, just as digital supplanted paper (well, for many people, although paper still has a strong following).
- Whilst people are still addicted to it like it was oxygen, then yes email will remain the primary electronic communication method.
The fact is that email may not be the most efficient or best way to communicate. However, it just works across so many scenarios.
Other areas will become more popular as the workforce changes generations.
The selfie generation have no problem seeing themselves on video. Chatting away in business as they do with their friends on WhatsApp now.
It is just a matter of time. Longer though than most of the millennial blog writers would have you believe.
