Check out TMail21 ("Power Threads for Teams". It is explicitly designed as an asynchronous communication platform. Furthermore, it is being integrated into all of the chat services like Slack, Hipchat etc. to avoid balkanization between chat and asynchronous communication.
The key is to realize that Slack et al are really good for synchronous communication (users need to be present simultaneously to really be effective). EMail was designed for asynchronous (reply later) communication. The expectation that everything can be done synchronously is unrealistic. The reasons for this are users spread across multiple timezones, unavailability of a party, the need for some thought and consideration etc.
Unfortunately, email, as we all know has a lot of flaws.
An ideal comprehensive communication infrastructure would be one that encompasses both synchronous (Slack, Hipchat etc.) and asynchronous modes but in such a way that one doesn't create two disjoint islands as is the case now between chat and email.
TMail21 (https://tmail21.com) is an asynchronous communications platform that is designed (amongst other things) to integrate with chat apps so the appropriate communication mode can be used at the appropriate time.
At the end of the day there is no silver bullet to the team communication and collaboration challenge. There are so many permutations and combinations of use cases. It's a matter of picking the right tool for the right job.
The other reasons why processes are not adopted is that most employees are not thinking in terms of 'processes'. Secondly typical process/BPM tools are geared towards I.T. rather than regular workers.
Both problems can be solved by gearing tools towards end-users rather than I.T. and allowing processes to emerge from lower-level constructs like (say) discussion threads that workers normally participate in. This would gently steer workers towards a process mindset.
You might want to consider TMail21 (https://tmail21.com). We just soft-launched a couple of weeks back. It is what we call a Lean BPM app.
The idea behind TMail21 is that is starts with Topic-Oriented Discussions and then allows a user to progress to Goal-oriented Discussions and finally to what we call Lean Processes.
TMail21 was designed to look and feel a lot like e-mail, so it feels instantly familiar to most business users.
Until now, traditional Business Process Management (BPM) has been a code-oriented solution not geared towards regular business users. TMail21 is definitively geared towards regular business users. We refer to this as Lean BPM and in fact have created a Lean BPM Manifesto https://tmail21.com/lean-bpm-manifesto/ to enumerate the principles of our approach.
I should also mention that Lean BPM and Project tools like Asana/Basecamp/Trello solve different problems. Some differences
1) The Process-to-project ratio in a typical work environment is very high (often 100:1). So there may be 10,000 process instances vs. 100 projects. So, obviously this calls for a very different interface.
2) Processes are really good for capturing recurring work patterns. In Lean BPM, patterns that repeat often can be easily institutionalized into Process Templates.
3) Unlike tools like Asana which are primarily orchestration tools, a key element of Process tools is capturing and evolving a meaningful process state.
These points are best illustrated with an example. Let's consider the example of a Blog Post. An organization may do hundreds of Blog Posts. These could be done as Projects,
but are probably better done as Processes as they tend to have similar goals, process state and tasks.
So the Sections (Process State) of a Blog Post may contain
a) Title Ideation - A text Section, to brainstorm titles
b) Article Outline - A rough outline of the article
c) The Actual Article - A text Section with the actual article
d) Blog Form - A form Section with fields like
Blog Title,
Process State (CONTENT-CREATION-> OUTREACH-STARTED -> OUTREACH-ENDED),
Blog link,
Tweet link,
Facebook Post link,
Google+ post link,
e) Planned Tweets - A text Section
f) Hashtags and keywords - A text Section with hashtags and keywords that will be
g) Influencer Outreach - A Grid Section with a list of influencers that will
there will be outreach to. Each row will represent a single influencer and their
outreach state
h) Checklist - A checklist that lists the tasks required to complete this Process.
At a very high level, email is primarily used for discussions. With this view, successful innovation in the e-mail space requires innovation in the nature of discussions themselves. Tinkering around with better usability or feature improvements will not be sufficient to overcome the massive inertia of 'traditional e-mail'.
We are a startup that just launched (https://tmail21.com) that aims to rethink the discussion itself. In our view, one of the major problems of e-mail (and chat for that matter) is that the discussions are not goal-oriented. So, discussions/threads can meander around with no outcome or accountability.
So, we enhance the notion of discussions to be goal-oriented.
Now, once one has the notion of goal-oriented discussions, a natural next step is to evolve a goal-oriented discussion into a Lean Process (which is basically a goal-oriented discussion with more structure) . Examples of a Lean Process might be a Blog Article process, a Product Deployment Process, a Feature Design Process, an Issue Escalation Process etc.
We've done all this in an email-LIKE interface. I guess we'll leave it to others to decide whether this constitutes innovation in the e-mail space :)
Pretty good endeavor that you essentially created a BPM application, that is only as if email used as a BPM platform which is seen prevailing in corporate than other enterprise tools (SAP, Oracle etc.)
I actually propose instead of re-inventing email, create addons to extend what email message can be used/read/interacted with. For example, high school teaching today has been reliant on gmail for offline homework assignment and discuss between teacher and kids. There are some tools in that space aggressively exploited by schools to conduct their "innovative" teaching efforts.
Gmail, or microsoft outlook would be the best go-to destination for the majority of who can afford an in-house IT team, or shadow IT in large enterprise who's tired of the lack of evolution from SAP, IBM etc.
Still, Gmail and outlook are slow in adopting or providing email as an open extendable platform for BPM application purpose.
Then there are everyday use of email other than BPM, notification, online purchase receipt, offline discussion, even transmitting files, photo etc. via email are somewhat common with email client.
The longevity of email is exactly the lack of rigor of the intended use of it, BPM or not, email is flexible to conduct any discussion to an open goal, or without a goal.
To understand email better, one has to compare email to SMS, and social media along with how mass used these tools.
Thanks for your insights bitcuration. I agree that email is flexible enough to do things like goal oriented discussions, but it is just so painful. The best one can do is fling attachments around and hope to get all the versioning right and avoid inadvertent branching.
TMail21 does other email-like things like transmitting files, notifications, full search etc.
It also does interesting things like giving every thread a unique tracking number, which allows it to be tied into the broader enterprise ecosystem. The idea is that just like the URL transformed the Internet (i.e. the web), Tracking numbers can transform 'email'. Now, TMails can be referred to from Chat, Voice, IM, Apps, Spreadsheets etc.
Another thing we do that is very hard to do in email is things like Certified Mail, Certified Forwards, Transactional Guarantees, Certified Diffs, Non-repudiable audit trails etc.
All of these capabilities are however means to an end to make TMail21 the first true BPM tool for regular business users (rather than for coders and 'process analysts)
At a very high level, email is primarily used for discussions.
I guess it depends on what you mean by "primarily" but my inbox is overwhelmingly notifications and announcements, not discussions. There's remarkably little of my inbox dedicated to actually talking to people.
You are right. There is a mix of notifications and discussions with the mix varying between the two based on the nature of user's communication. In more collaborative scenarios, it may be 80%-20% discussion-notification. In other scenarios the ratio may be reversed.
On the pure notification front, we have friendly tracking numbers (so that notifications can be referred to from other places like spreadsheets, chat, apps, voice etc.). These tracking numbers look something like 124-1234-1234. We also support Certified Mail, Certified Forwards, Certified Read Acks etc.
Having said this, we currently support outbound notifications (from TMail to TMail/EMail). On the inbound side we support TMail to TMail. We do not currently support EMail to TMail notifications although we may add this if we see sufficient demand.
So, what are Lean Processes? Lean Processes are the antithesis of rigid BPM tools.
Here are the key concepts behind lean processes:
1) They are oriented towards knowledge workers (rather than I.T. employees or straight task workers).
2) They allow knowledge workers to start with simple discussions then progress towards goal-oriented discussions and finally lean processes. So, rather than starting with a fully formed abstract process, the idea is to start with examples, observe patterns and then rapidly iterate.
A related idea is to allow users to rapidly achieve Process-Problem fit. (This is analogous to the Product-Market fit concept from the Lean Startup methodology)
3) Zero-Code or Code-Later: The philosophy of Lean Processes is that knowledge workers need to be able to rapidly iterate on processes. Accordingly, anything that slows this iterative process down (such as requiring support from I.T.) is discouraged. To the extent that integration is required a code-later philosophy is implemented which allows a hardened process to be integrated with no interruption in the knowledge-worker flow.
4) Guidance and Support rather than Control: Traditional BPM is more geared towards a high-level of prescriptiveness and control. The Lean Process philosophy is that these types of processes are better handled by apps. Lean Processes are geared towards guidance and decision support. A related concept is that there is expected to be significant variation in processes and which requires a lean process system to be adaptive.
5) Communication and Collaboration are central to Lean Processes: Communication and collaboration need to be tightly integrated into the lean process.
6) Lean Processes span intra-business, B2B and B2C processes.
I think you hit the nail on the head. An email is yours in the sense that once sent to you, the sender cannot 'take it away' or 'modify it' or 'delete it'.
This is different than many other 'communication protocols' out there such as Facebook Posts, Twitter Posts, Slack comments, Shared Docs etc. which all have the notion of an 'owner' who can retract permissions, modify, delete etc. after 'send'. The email analogy would be the sender reaching into your inbox and deleting or modifying your email (ugh!). This is fundamentally what gives email the feel that there is no favored owner. Conversely, every recipient can feel that the email is theirs.
We're launching an email-like service, (https://tmail21.com) in the next couple of weeks. Our premise is to preserve the best aspects of email while fixing or improving on the worst.
We think one of the best aspects of email is the aforementioned 'democratic' (i.e. no favored owner) characteristic.
Wonder how this dynamic plays out in SaaS products that have network effects. For example in a B2B communication service (like ours) you want users (in one signed-up account) to be able to communicate with other users (who have not signed up) and not have THOSE users have to pull out THEIR credit cards since they were not making an explicit decision to join.
We've settled on 3 free users in a business account to facilitate this viral effect. (3 being the smallest group greater than a pair :). Wonder if anyone has any thoughts on this?
Will update you on our experiences as we are launching soon.
Makes you wonder about the dynamics of Facebook's upcoming Facebook at Work. Can imagine the 'interest graph' of a lot of employees will be interest in pleasing their bosses. Will they spend a lot of time 'liking' their boss's posts instead of following 'useful' people? Blogged about this recently. https://tmail21.com/blog/is-social-the-future-of-work/
I think there are two distinct questions here, viz. is Social useful at Work and will Facebook at Work "fail" like Yammer or crush/be-crushed-by Slack et al. The reason these are distinct questions is that Facebook at Work is likely to be much more than just a Social Network and intrude heavily into Slack-like territory with Group chats etc. We wrote an article on this recently that explores this issue: https://tmail21.com/blog/is-social-the-future-of-work/
