Email Analytics for Interaction Speed- Mining Organizational Latencies from Employee Inboxes

Abstract

Effective communication is one of the organization’s success factors. Email is widely spread and often is the most used communication method, however some organizational latencies can happen which can lead to poor communication between employees and customers. The aim of this research is to find out if it is possible to reduce organizational latencies by improving email communication. The research was performed using grounded theory as both a method of data collection and data analysis, which was supported by the multiple case study research complemented by a number of interviews. The proof of concept research method was additionally used both to make the interventions in the interviews and as a complimentary way to support the grounded theory research process. As a part of the research results, we have discovered that in some organizations the reason for organizational latencies is that email is misused and that those organizational latencies can be mined from the employees' inboxes with the software prototype built during this research. We also make a proposal that in some organizations email should be replaced with an issue tracker (or a similar system).