RSS feeds reduce email overload

October 30, 2007

IT departments set up internal information feeds from RSS servers and readers that employees can subscribe to, a delivery mechanism that, for some information, can be more precise and effective than e-mail "The first problem we see addressed regularly with enterprise RSS systems is e-mail overload. Knowledge workers these days are  just about completely fed up with e-mail," says Forrester Research analyst  Oliver Young,

RSS keeps need-to-know information out of the e-mail channel, which for most people is "a need-to-do task list sort of thing," Young said. Need-to-know e-mails - such as a corporate benefits update or a newsletter - end up being  deleted or ignored, even though employees recognise that they may contain potentially important information.

But a company could post human resource messages and documents on the intranet's human resources section and send RSS alerts with the appropriate links.

RSS feeds became popular initially as a convenient way for Web publishers to alert their readers about new articles and changed information on their sites.

Using consumer grade RSS readers like those from Google and Bloglines, people quickly check what's new on their favorite sites without having to visit them, but using RSS readers at work, creates potential problems for IT departments in areas like security and user support.

Seeing an opportunity, vendors like Attensa, NewsGator and KnowNow have developed on-premise, behind-the-firewall RSS software for workplaces. These ' systems can be integrated with existing corporate directories and security frameworks, giving IT departments control over employees' RSS use.

At NHS Orkney, few of the 600 or so users, mostly doctors, nurses, physical therapists and business administrators, are technically savvy. Rendall has reached out to departments and held frequent training sessions to promote the RSS system's use.

"The biggest challenge is helping people make the switch and get their heads around the new RSS paradigm," he says.

This user indifference and ignorance, coupled with e-mail familiarity, is a common barrier to RSS adoption in workplaces, according to Forrester's Young.

Young recommends starting RSS deployments within specific groups in an organisation and with the purpose of improving a specific communication issue.

In addition to reducing e-mail, enterprise RSS systems often boost organisations' use of intranets, blogs and wikis by alerting employees to changes and additions, Young said.

At NHS Orkney, the NewsGator system lets employees subscribe to feeds from the organisation's blogs and wikis, thus increasing their readership and boosting collaboration and communication, Rendall said.

Not to be overlooked is the ability of enterprise RSS systems to give managers a clear view into how popular blogs, wikis, external sites and intranet sections are with employees. "Because it's all coming into one central location, you can do very advanced analytics on who is reading what," says Young.

For example, if half of the sales team subscribes to one specific journal's feed, it might make sense to suggest the feed to the other half. "It really helps information spread more quickly and best practices to proliferate across the enterprise," he said. But "If your CEO's blog has no one reading it, you know pretty quickly there's a problem there."

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/139105/companies_tap_rss_to_tame_info_overload.html