The convergence of communications and collaboration tools has created an increasingly complex set of interactions among multiple parties over a wide range of channels. The challenge for regulated enterprises is not only how to capture these messages and immutably store them in a useful format, but also to do so in a way that enables them to comply with time-restricted requests that can be as short as 72hrs.

Email is no longer the dominant player in enterprise communications. It’s being challenged and replaced by a mishmash of public and private messaging services and applications, driven by a need to communicate with others via the method we know our message will be heard. Invariably, this means not using our preferred device or service, but the ones our audiences prefer.

And, because most people are curious, we like to test new applications too. If someone recommends a great collaboration tool we try it out. Maybe on a small project at first, but if the functionality suits our working style or provides something an enterprise tool doesn’t, we start using it more and more. Even when we know we probably shouldn’t.

Consequently, our days are filled with chats on Skype, Facebook or WhatsApp. We might send notes to colleagues over IBM Sametime, but use Slack for that project we’re working on with our partners across town and Cisco Spark with another team.

In addition, we’re now seeing what’s known as “channel hopping”, whereby a conversation might start on email, but continue on one or many other channels. This method of communicating is not driven by subterfuge, but by convenience, mood, location and the functionality of the communication network. In today’s always-on, instant-appeasement society where we all carry fast internet-connected super computers, if someone is walking out of the office it’s far easier to WhatsApp a reply, dictate an SMS, or even video call a response to an email. So now conversations aren’t remaining within a single channel, they are floating effortlessly between channels based on the whim of the user concerned.

Fundamental changes are occurring in the work communications environment. They’re happening slowly and incrementally, but if looking back over the last five years it’s possible to see a sweeping change. And now the enterprise communications market is starting to catch up with tools such as Microsoft Teams, Cisco Spark, and IBM Verse, taking the functionality that people like about public tools, and supersizing it for business.

In the middle of this change sits compliance. When compliance was just required for email, it was relatively easy to monitor, archive, and search. But now there are typically 10-20 different tools in authorised use within an organisation, and potentially dozens of unauthorised ones too. In the beginning, IT addressed the issue by trying to ban anything that wasn’t email. There was a resounding lack of success with this strategy, so they turned to point solutions to capture and store these other forms of electronic communications including reformatting them into emails and sending them to the email archive. The IT department addressed Facebook or Twitter posts in a similarly rudimentary way, taking snapshots of conversations and storing those too. It served a purpose for all but the most highly regulated organisations while volumes were low.

But now the number of messages and the formats they take are growing exponentially. Reviewers are swamped just keeping up with everyday communications. Proactively looking for anomalies, indiscretions and just plain old-fashioned mistakes is a luxury many companies can’t afford.

eDiscovery requests present their own challenges. Searches often involve entire teams just to go through different systems piecing together even simple conversations. Of course, this is only possible if each piece of the conversation has actually been captured as it spreads across the various networks and the identity of the users can be recognised too. Conversations that have taken place in real-time can be edited or deleted long before a back-up is taken. With these limitations, the chances of missing something key to an investigation are high. In litigation, if the other party has real-time archiving of all their electronic communications stored centrally in an immutable archive, the best strategy may be to settle out of court—which is expensive, wasteful, and frustrating.

In the meantime, regulations continue to tighten. MiFID II and GDPR are just the beginning. They both have wider implications outside of the European Union. GDPR, for example, affects anyone world-wide who processes European citizens’ data. This expectation of control over data by regulators and governments, regardless of an organisation’s location, can be seen elsewhere too, such as China’s new cybersecurity law which states that sensitive data must be stored domestically.

One of the most meaningful actions a firm can take this year is to revise how they capture, store, search, export and dispose of their electronic communications, and to build a plan to bring that lifecycle in-line with the way their employees are using modern communications tools. In addition to fulfilling pre- and post-trade communication reconstruction requests under MiFID II, it will also simplify requests for the right to be forgotten under GDPR by allowing reviewers to easily identify all of the locations where an individual’s data is stored. This will then enable them to make an accurate decision on whether or not they can erase their data from all corporate systems.

Imperative to this is a centralized immutable, WORM-based archive, which not only makes it easier to comply with a variety of regulations, but provides a single authentic copy of all communications data accessible in a matter of seconds through the same interface regardless of data type.

By storing interactions in one location, instead of separate messages in a variety of locations, reviewers can quickly comprehend the complete conversation in context. Combined with intelligent display filters that understand the meta-data of a message it’s possible for reviewers to pinpoint exactly when information was updated or deleted and drastically reduce review time.

Rather than just knowing that a tweet was sent at a certain time, with centralised contextual archiving reviewers can see far more information including which other communication platforms were used by the person during the same time frame, and with whom they were conversing. User names of employees and perhaps even those of partners or customers are already matched through user management services in combination with corporate directory services, making it easier to distinguish and follow an otherwise “unknown” person through a conversation.

Armed with far more information than a simple date and time stamp, contextual arching makes it quicker and more intuitive for reviewers to build a complete picture of conversations held over different channels, from different sources and understand the context of a conversation in seconds. Once firms achieve this they can meet not only meet compliance and eDiscovery obligations, but also gain insight into their communications data that can be used to improve the overall effectiveness and productivity of the business.