Noting that most retail workers don't have personal access to corporate e-mail, Sendmail Inc. is joining Hewlett-Packard Co. and Intel Corp. to roll out a Workforce Mail application designed to let workers receive and send e-mail through PDAs, POS terminals, kiosks and other devices. "The idea is to put workers in local stores in the loop with headquarters," says Greg Olson, chairman and founder of Sendmail.
"More than half of retail workers don't have access to e-mail," he says. A survey conducted in February for Sendmail by King Research indicated that 70% of retail workers have no access to corporate e-mail. Through the
Workforce Mail program, Olson adds, retailers can extend e-mail access to warehouse workers, cashiers, sales people and others who don’t normally work at a desktop computer or use a laptop for typical e-mail access.
Olson says the system is already being used by two retail chains, including one with 60,000 users. The cost for the system ranges from $1 to $2 per month per user, including software, network hardware, maintenance and technical support. But the costs of end-user devices, such as PDAs and kiosks, is separate, Olson says.
He adds that many retailers have expressed interest in deploying Workforce Mail through their POS terminals. He adds that for some older POS terminals this could require extra integration costs, but that most modern terminals should integrate with Workforce Mail without much modification.
A main advantage of the Workforce Mail system, Olson says, is that it allows retailers to control employee use of e-mail outside of a more expensive e-mail management system like Microsoft Exchange. "You can design the system to show who's e-mailing and to where, and set up alerts to let managers know if employees are sending e-mail to a non-work-related address."
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