How three firms solved their spam email problems differently

¶ … firms took decidedly different approaches towards solving a problem that continually plagues many companies of various sizes. Those firms included; First Banking Services of Florida, Charter Communications and Pier One Imports and the problem they all three faced was spam email.

SPAM email may not seem a likely culprit for trouble but Charter recognized that over fifty percent of the email it was receiving was spam, while Pier One Imports found that over eighty percent of their email was spam. First Banking Services knew that its email was being affected, since many of their emails contain very large attachments, Spam was a major problem in slowing down their communications. All three companies were searching for help in solving their spam problems.

The Problem

With the advent of email, business communications have exploded with many large and small firms receiving a torrent of email on a daily basis. Emails are now considered legal communications and can provide a quick, efficient and timely method for conducting and confirming business.

The problem is that spammers use email to deliver their messages as well. Many times spam accounts for a large percent of emails received and it can be burdensome. Spam takes up time and space, and it must be deleted from email accounts in order to facilitate 'real' business opportunities. Managing spam takes time and money that could be better spent on other business endeavors. As an example, Pier One Imports were required to clear over eighty percent of emails on a daily basis, which caused employee productivity to suffer accordingly.

Charter Financial was also faced with a huge percentage of spam vs. regular emails, and along with First Banking Services of Florida, all three searched for a method to block or eliminate spam email.

Application

All three companies searched for an answer to their particular spam problem. After discovering what worked (and in two cases, what did not work) the companies have found three different email filtering programs that seem to work well for each of them. Applying the different programs to each scenario allows the firms to address the problem of spam in their own manner.

What was learned by the process is that each company found a software solution to the problem. This provides the reader with the understanding that there are a wide variety of solutions to stopping email. Each of these three companies were faced with stopping or filtering email, and all three discovered unique methods for doing so.

This likely means that cost, installation, and support all played a role in the choice(s) made by these companies. It also means that there are plenty of avenues for solving this type of problem for other companies facing the same situation.

It seems likely that with the plethora of spam email filtering software available to business customers, choices would be rather easy to make regarding the best program for the specific company.