But we don't have people to baby sit the servers after hours or on weekends. And they do go on working. We are using the Exchange public folders extensively for publishing information, and for calendar functions. Employees also use Exchange to add links to material on the Web server, and have taken advantage of the Help Desk and Electronic Forms functions of the software. The users have come to see Exchange as a necessity, and if the server is down, no one can work.
People use it all day long, to share information and to conduct business.
People have become dependent on it. Prior to the installation of Exchange, e-mail was not seen as critical, and there were those who saw no use for it at all, he added. One of the business units has been able to speed up the billing process as the users have started submitting time sheets by e-mail. There was no planning behind that, just a groundswell of use, Hendel noted. We can't communicate and complete transactions without it.