Companies are quite familiar with archiving the emails of their employees. Archiving mail trails have helped companies in the past with eDiscovery requests from courts and regulators that govern the business.
But the scope of communication has widened, and the Covid-19 pandemic has also accelerated the need for other business communication channels. Mobile communication now plays a key role in both the government and private sectors. Text messages, voice calls, and chats through mobile instant messaging applications (IM) have now become common.
The use of mobile devices in workplaces is alarming. Almost 88% of employees used mobile phones for work during their personal time, even before the pandemic. And, almost 50% of the employees use mobile devices to access work-related content. The Covid-19 pandemic and the work-from-home culture resulted from that have further increased the use of mobile communication by employees.
This year, the popular mobile chat application WhatsApp saw a record high of 100 billion messages through its application daily. When it comes to calls alone, almost 2 billion minutes of video and voice calls are made on WhatsApp every day.
A recent survey shows that only 20% of people answer calls that they aren’t expecting, but people often read text messages within 5 seconds of their receipt. Text messages have an average response rate of 45% and are almost ten times quicker than a phone call.
Due to these factors, almost 89% of the customers say that they prefer to text a business for a sale, setting up an appointment, or a service, over any other mode of communication. Hence, businesses that still restrict their employees to use mobile phones for communication are missing out on a gold mine of business opportunities.
Let us see the top reasons to archive mobile communication.
1) Archiving mobile communication for compliance: As said earlier, companies have been using emails for several years, and most of these companies are familiar with the practice of archiving emails. But when it comes to archiving other content, we see that many companies are still out in the blue.
A recent study shows that companies only archive 50% of the content that is generated from the business. This means that the other 50% of the business-related content is not archived at all, which should be considered a serious issue.
The use of mobile messaging applications like WhatsApp, WeChat, Telegram, and Signal for business communication has increased exponentially. It is true that the adoption of such modern mobile chat applications can benefit the business, but the use of such applications without due diligence can have a negative impact on the companies.
Financial regulators like the SEC, FINRA, FCA, ESMA, HKMA, regulations such as Dodd-Frank, MiFID II, HIPAA, and public records acts such as FOIA, FISMA, or FRCP require institutions to retain mobile communications made by the employees. After the outbreak of the pandemic, financial regulators like the FCA, and HKMA have issued notices for financial firms regarding the need for compliant mobile communication.
2) Litigation and eDiscovery: Mobile communication continues to grow as the preferred mode of communication in many enterprises, and due to this reason corporate information gets shared in these channels, more than ever before. As mobile communication is considered less formal than emails, employees may choose to use their mobile devices to illegally exchange sensitive information outside the office.
Any conversation made by the employee relating to the company’s business must be considered as a business record, whether it be emails, calls, text messages, or mobile IM chats. Most of these communications contain sensitive information that can later be used as evidence in breach of contract allegations, work disputes, or misconduct cases.
Archiving mobile communication can help organizations to have an early insight, and be prepared for eDiscovery requests.
The TeleMessage Network Archiver helps capture mobile SMS and the Voice Call Archiver helps capture mobile calls, of employees working in regulated organizations. The recorded calls, SMS, and MMS can be stored in an enterprise archive of the organization’s choice, in an easily retrievable format. The use of such mobile archiving tools gives organizations the confidence they need in court cases and helps them respond to eDiscovery requests swiftly and efficiently.
3) Business Insight: Companies need to start seeing their communication archive as a strategic business asset rather than just records that they are bound to keep for compliance.
Analyzing the communication between employees and clients will help companies frame a behavior pattern of their clients, which will help companies provide better customer services. Such intuitive data holds valuable metrics that the organization can use to make decisions. Assess the data, detect trends, gather insights, and apply relevant solutions to improve business performance and customer relationships. After all, customer satisfaction is the key to good and long-term business.
The archived data serves as a strategic asset for every business. This data can be used to gather unique information about the business practices and make adjustments to overcome hurdles and close targets.
4) Cost-effectiveness: Buying more hardware to store mobile data is expensive. Instead, organizations can choose to invest in archiving solutions. An archived database will hold on to everything to allow future access. Integration of enterprise-wide archiving solutions can eliminate all the operational complexities.
As volumes of mobile data start piling up, companies may need to shift the insignificant data for historical record keeping. In essence, organizations must archive the data instead of it getting mixed up with pivotal info required for immediate use. Building server rooms for archiving employee communication can only add to the operational costs of the organization. Instead, companies can depend on communication archiving vendors to get the same thing done for a fraction of the cost.
5) For work-policy enforcement – The benefits of using mobile devices for business communication outweigh the risks associated with them. Enacting BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policies, where companies allow employees to use their own mobile devices for business communication helps organizations to reduce the cost of providing mobile devices.
Instead of buying mobile devices for all their employees, organizations can choose to invest in a reliable mobile archiving vendor. Educating the employees about the risks of sharing inside information, and giving them the awareness that the communication between employees and customers is monitored at all times will help organizations mitigate risks associated with data leakage.
Conclusion
Even though many companies have experience in recording and archiving their emails, when it comes to archiving mobile communication there is still a bit of confusion.
BYOD and CYOD policies offered by most companies and client requests for newer and smoother ways of communication are the key factors that compel employees to shift to mobile communication. But many companies tend to have a cavalier attitude about the mobile communications done by their employees. Usually, such companies understand the gravity of the situation only when huge penalties and disciplinary actions are taken by courts and regulators. Companies need to pay attention to and understand that archiving mobile communication is a wise idea before it’s too late.
TeleMessage offers a variety of mobile archiving solutions that help organizations in the recording and archiving of employee mobile communication. Our wide range of products not only helps organizations record voice calls and capture mobile SMS but also helps in mobile instant message archiving.
Owing to the widespread use of mobile instant messaging applications by regulated employees, TeleMessage also offers services like WhatsApp archiving, WeChat archiving, Signal archiving, and Telegram archiving.
About TeleMessage
TeleMessage captures and retains mobile content, including mobile SMS messages, voice calls, and WhatsApp, and WeChat conversations from corporate or BYOD mobile phones to ensure compliance with various data protection regulations. The messages are securely and reliably retained within TeleMessage servers or forwarded to your choice of archiving data storage vendor.
Our mobile archiving products securely record content from mobile carriers and mobile devices for various ownership models (BYOD, CYOD, and employer-issued). With our multiple archiving solutions, you can always find the right tools or blend for your requirements:
- Network Archiver
- Enterprise Number Archiver
- Android Archiver
- WhatsApp Archiver
- WeChat Archiver
- Signal Archiver
- Telegram Archiver
TeleMessage offers cross-carrier and international mobile text & calls archiving for corporate and BYOD phones. Visit our website at www.telemessage.com to learn more about our mobile archiving products.
