Companies increasingly rely on e-mail for workday communications. It follows, then, that an increasing amount of important information related to contracts, accounts, customer service, and other business-critical areas is now contained in electronic documents.

Business records play an important role in the daily operations of a company, and increasingly, companies are required to manage and retain these records in case a legal issue arises. Most businesses have a system for managing paper business records, but many businesses remain unclear as to what constitutes an e-mail business record and as to how e-mail business records should be managed after they are identified.

The following information will teach you how to understand the distinction between e-mail business records and other messages. It will also teach you why it's important that your company retain and manage such records to keep important information organized and to reduce the risk of liability. Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 can also help because it has specific features that help you to manage the confidentiality and reuse of e-mail messages in your company.

Take charge of your e-mail business records today, and help your company stay organized and avoid risk.

• Manage e-mail messages as business records (Article)
  Do you know what makes an e-mail message a business record and why it matters? Learn the answers in this article from Nancy Flynn and Randolph Kahn, authors of E-Mail Rules.
• Introducing Information Rights Management (Article)
  Help prevent sensitive information from being printed, forwarded, or copied by unauthorized people.
• Create content with restricted permission (Article)
  Use Outlook 2003 to maintain control over your e-mail after you send it.
• Mark a message as private, personal, or confidential (Article)
  Clearly mark your e-mail messages by using Outlook 2003.
• Identify e-mail from outside your company (Article)
  Use Outlook 2003 to easily recognize e-mail from outside partners and customers.