Our day starts the moment we sit down at our desks. Before we can actually do work, we recollect what we did yesterday through emails, figure out what we need to do today through emails and at the end of the day, send emails out of what we did. We first go through our new emails, then remove spam, then figure out what email goes to which project and what kind of email it is. At the same time we figure out which email needs an immediate response and which emails need to be forwarded to someone else. It is not uncommon to receive hundreds of emails a day and take up to four hours to get organized. Since we are not robots, overtime we start dreading the thought of opening our emails in the morning because of the exhausting repetition we do when our day starts.
We moved to hosted project management like BaseCamp and Manymoon which we found are great tools to stay on top of our projects. We also needed a more advance task tracking system so we also started using JIRA, then wait we need to track our time! We used OpenAir as well.
After settling into BaseCamp, we noticed that our day still starts with checking emails because the world doesn't communicate through BaseCamp alone, but it does with email. Our project managers, for example, like to keep the actual logistics of the project away from clients and just communicate with them via email. What we thought would be a timesaver, we actually add two more steps (checking BaseCamp and JIRA) before we can actually work. So before we could actually work. Here's what we had to do first:
So we realized that telling our team to keep BaseCamp, JIRA, OpenAir, their emails in sync and still be an efficient worker wasn't a fair request. We could go back to just emails, which would reduce the time it takes before we can work, but by choosing to go with these web applications, we acknowledged a need for organized projects and organized workers. The fact remains that emails will always be the first thing we check everyday.
The goal of kolibo is to not replace emails, but to change the process on how they are organized by simply extending the functionality of emails. This means kolibo is not intrusive to the point where all members need to sign up to stay synced. Kolibo is invisible to people who are not using it and stays synced for those who are. And kolibo is not for just teams; Individuals can stay on top of their emails using kolibo as an invisible tool. So now with kolibo our day starts with just checking and updating kolibo.