Like it or not, Email is here to stay and if you're anything like our executives here at The Internet Group, you will receive anything from 50-250 emails per day. Furthermore if you use your inbox as your ‘to-do list’ then you probably shudder every time your inbox beeps to alert of a new email.

So what to do? Well firstly there are some really quick wins to aid you in creating emails and also speed up reading them. Abbreviations are not only the domain of text messages and work really well when sending emails. Below are some examples of commonly used terms that can be turned into acronyms.

It’s probably wise to teach your staff these simple terms as sending them is only effective if the recipient understands them!

Another good piece of advice is do not make email subject lines cryptic e.g. when you send an email, don’t use unfinished subject lines such as ‘we must...’. We recommend that you put the exact matter in the subject line i.e. ‘we must discuss Dave’s work experience ASAP’. This allows the recipient to speed read their email and assess if the email needs actioning straight away.

Another recommended technology would be an archiving solution such as Quest Archive Manager. This solution will catch all emails that go in and out of your network, even if they are deleted. While it’s busy capturing all your emailed information it will also index all of your email content, including attachments! This will allow you to quickly and easily search through your emails with a much greater efficiency and speed than you would be able to within outlook.

Another tip we recommend is to question yourself when creating an email is as to whether the recipients actually need to be recipients i.e. do they all need to know? Quite often people use emails to ensure everyone is informed of a matter but the reality is that not all recipients actually need informing. This practice will ensure that the emails you receive are sent to you because they actually need your intervention and not just sent to you because ‘we know you like to know everything that is going on’.

The lesson learnt is that Email is definitely your friend and can ensure your business thrives through efficiency. However, abuse it and it will take over your life and you will always be a slave to your inbox.

Talk to us about our mail archiving solutions today by calling 0800 007 5797.

Read about our World class Service Desk within this month's Support World Magazine.

Find out why we think a banana represents our service culture... "Full of energy, gets the job done and does it well..."

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Often I get asked by friends and by people that I meet ‘what does my company do?’ I always try and avoid the words “I’m in IT” as my experience has shown me that most people’s eyes tend to glaze over quicker than I can say the company is called The Internet Group and......! So over the years I have honed my one minute pitch to ensure that my audience don’t fall asleep when I explain what my company does and try and keep it to simple plain English that isn’t going to bore them with IT TLA’s (three letter acronyms) that most IT people tend to do.

The inspiration for writing this article is that I thought by virtue of the fact that you are reading it, you are potentially a client and you also might benefit from hearing it rather than trawling through our website. So here goes...

The Internet Group is a London based IT service provider that helps businesses understand what benefits IT can bring to their organisation and help it become more efficient and ultimately make more money. We also serve companies that already own IT systems (probably quite complex) and require someone to totally manage it for them or work with their internal teams to manage it. We are what is commonly known as a Managed Service Provider i.e. we manage companies IT Solutions. You probably know this service as IT Support or Computer Help.

If at this point my audience don’t look too tired or bleary eyed, I continue to explain further.

We have a 24 hour IT service desk (you might know this as an IT Help Desk) that has been accredited with a 3 star SDI (Service Desk Institute) award. An SDI Certification is likened to an ISO accreditation but it only focuses on the standards, disciplines and process within an IT service desk environment. But this is not just any award, the SDI standards are recognised as a worldwide standards confirming that best practice IT service management frameworks are being adhered to. Companies like O2, Linklaters and Barclays Bank are all accredited with SDI certification, so you can only imagine the high level of service it requires to fulfil the standards. We are the smallest IT services company in the world to achieve this (even though we have 60+ staff!).

This accreditation took us about 2.5 years to achieve plus a lot of hard work but it was all worth it. Why? Well it now means that our offering is not only unique within our market space, but our offering is class leading. However we don’t just proclaim it, we’ve had it measured, tested and confirmed by the SDi.

Service desk aside, we are also accredited by some of the world’s largest IT vendors such as Microsoft, Dell, Cisco and Symantec to supply and install world class secure IT infrastructures. We are trusted by 100’s of highly successful companies throughout the UK and the world with clients in America, EMEA and the Asia-Pacific.

We believe our success is largely due to our transparent and client centric approach, our high technical ability, our professionalism and due to our size, our ability to quickly react to the high demands of our clients. We have found that most of our clients who join The Internet Group experience have either been let down in the past by their IT providers by their lack of expertise, inconsistent quality of service or lack of availability. Here at The Internet Group we also deliver services that fit the requirements and expectations of our clients.

At this time if they are still awake and haven’t slipped into an ITT (IT Trance!) I then conclude my repertoire.

I am the Sales and Marketing Director of the company and my email address is mitchell@theinternetgroup.com and my direct dial is 020 8371 6456. Drop me a line if you want to know more about our Managed Services and IT Service desk and how it can add value to your business.

Well it’s 9.21am and I am sitting in my office and even the most ardent of employees is having a hard time to get here. I am worried? Absolutely not. Why you may ask yourself. The answer is simple, here at The Internet Group we have a complete snow plan. Our snow plan means that all of our users be it accounts, sales or support can login from home and work as if they were at the office. Not only that, our phone system is complex enough that when you dial a direct dial their PC at home rings!

We have the technology, the bandwidth and the process to deal with these scenarios and of late we have been given plenty of opportunities to test them including losing power at our head office!

So despite all the doom and gloom of weather conditions, here at The Internet Group it is business as usual and the service we offer is unaffected.

This is how to do business in the 21st century. Always on and always available.

Today we were officially awarded our 3 Stars by the SDI!

After months of hard work we have been awarded for our customer lead service and shows that we provide a high level of excellence and maturity in all aspects of service delivery.

See below the pictures of how happy our team are at the official presentation ceremony. Also see the award and plaque which was presented to us by Howard Kendall, Chairman and Founder of the SDI.

Read the exclusive news story here.