Michelle Rodger: Smartphones may save email from a lingering death

Well you could follow the example of Atos Origin, an international IT services company, which has publicly announced its goal to be a "zero email" company within three years.

Yup, no email. At all. Well, unless staff have to respond to customers who haven't yet joined the revolution.

Chief executive and chairman Thierry Breton hopes to eradicate all emails between Atos Origin employees by using improved communication applications as well as new collaboration tools and social media community platforms instead.

He believes data overload is polluting our working environments and encroaching into our personal lives, and says this move to reverse the trend is similar to the measures organisations took to reduce environmental pollution after the industrial revolution.

He insists the volume of emails we send and receive is unsustainable for business, with managers spending between five and 20 hours a week simply reading and writing emails.

"Email is on the way out as the best way to run a company and do business," says Breton.

He is not the only one to see the demise of email as a communication channel for business. According to Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg teenagers have given up on email, preferring to use SMS or IM (instant messenger) to contact each other.

His claim is reinforced in part by a comScore report on 2010 digital trends, which depicts a steady decline in web email. Total web email usage was down 8 per cent in the past year, with an incredible 59 per cent decline in use among people between the ages of 12 and 17.

Is it true? Are the rumours of the death of email a wild exaggeration? Can we really see the demise of email when people are still sending faxes?

Richard Moir, chief technology officer for Cisco in Scotland, agrees that the increasing use of social networking is having a huge impact on how business is done. But his concern is around the growth of social networking channels and the challenges of engaging with an audience which isn't yet using them. There's a danger of exclusion if one channel of communication like email is eliminated entirely.

Moir says: "There is a reduction in email as social media grows and that trend will continue. But there will still be certain tasks like sending confidential information where there is still a requirement for email.

"It is most likely that both email and social networking will continue to co-exist in future and each tool will be used depending on the type of communication."

Phil Worms is also sceptical. As marketing director for Glasgow-based technology firm Iomart, he says five years ago people were predicting paperless offices, and that hasn't happened yet. He says it's premature to talk about the death of email. Usage will undoubtedly decline as we use other media for communication, but it still ranks as the number one business application.

Worms describes email as the "lifeblood" of business. While he admits that web mail is probably in decline, he points out that mobile email is now mainstream and experiencing significant growth, driven largely by the adoption of smartphones and tablets.

Worms points to recent figures that showed 70.1 million mobile users - or 30 per cent of all those with a mobile phone - accessed email on their mobile, an increase of 36 per cent compared with 2009. Daily usage of email showed an even greater increase growing 40 per cent as 43.5 million users turned to their mobile devices on a nearly daily basis for their email communication needs.

At the end of the day there's not a one-size-fits-all solution. The best communicators are the ones that understand their audiences and how they want to consume your information.

Like it or not, you need to communicate with and engage with customers and employees in the way that suits them best, not the way that suits you best.

Let's look back in three years time and see if Atos can prove us wrong.