Have you ever worried that a critical e-mail was not delivered? Are you afraid to send certain e-mails because you cannot afford to have non-authorized eyes violate their confidentiality? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could send and receive legally certifiable documents (and signed too!) without having to use physical mail or FAX?
Certifying delivery, ensuring security, and ensuring that documents pass legal muster are among the types of capabilities RPost offers, empowering ordinary emails to become extraordinary. Individuals can use those functionalities directly. However, more and more organizations are using RPost as part of migrating from paper-based documents to electronic communications leveraging familiar and widely-accepted email managed-environments, such as Microsoft Outlook.
Electronic communications via email have key roles and limitations
Individuals and organizations need to communicate both internally and externally during normal business. Voice is obviously important but has a number of limitations, including lack of permanence and being subject to memory limitations. Physical mail and FAX continue to serve useful purposes for written communications, particularly in contracts and legal processes. But they also introduce time delays (for physical mail) or process inconveniences (for FAX, where, for example, pickups at the receiving end are not always certain). Moreover, both physical mail and FAX do not lend themselves to two way communications, such as being able to make changes to content that is revised and exchanged until an agreement is reached (such as the draft revisions of a contract).
Internet-based electronic communications in the form of email is a ubiquitous means of communicating content-related information. Now, much email (especially inbound) is of questionable value and a time drain. But the overall value of email means that it not going away as it has been embedded in our business DNA over the past three decades.
Though many of the everyday emails that you send fulfill their purpose, there are times when ordinary email is not sufficient. For example, ordinary emails are delivered on a best effort basis, meaning there is no guarantee that they are successfully sent or arrive.
If you send a business critical document, such as an invoice for work completed, wouldn’t it be nice to know exactly that the email was delivered, when it arrived and when it was opened? Above and beyond delivery proof, you may need legal and verifiable proof as to the accuracy of the content of the email and any attachments as well as a time stamp that would even be admissible in a court of law as evidence if that were necessary.
Note that although email-managed environments, such as Microsoft Outlook and Google Gmail, are business-class, ordinary email itself is not. Most email only follows simple standards that allow interchangeability and transparency (for example an email sent in Gmail can be received on any email-compliant-standards system). That is great in many cases, but it is not always enough. Standard email processes do not have many characteristics, such as the ability to certify delivery, that would make email itself fully suitable for business-grade processes. That is the role of registered email which is what RPost provides.
RPost Technology Simply Stated
Providing the necessary software to enrich and empower email with extra functionality is the goal of RPost, which has been in this business since 1999.
The foundation of RPost software is its Registered Email™ technology with over 50 patents. This technology is the basis for what RPost calls its Registered Electronic Xchange (ReX) which includes all four of RPost’s four platforms. Those include:
- RMail — provides certified delivery tracking and proof, email encryption, secure file transfer, and other services for email in an all-in-one add-in for Microsoft Outlook, Gmail, and other platforms
- RSign — provides legal signatures and other capabilities for econtracts
- RForms — enables PDF forms to be used for business automation
- RPostal — allows postal operators to offer RPost’s as a co-branded suite of services in their local markets
RMail® In a Nutshell
RMail is the company’s flagship platform for both individuals and organizations. RMail is structured as an email extension (such as an add-in to Microsoft Outlook and a Chrome Extension for Google Gmail) that adds one extra button in the user interface which asks if a message is to be Sent Registered. Every message that is sent that way is considered an RMail Registered Email™ message. RMail provides a number of enhanced email capabilities among which are:
- Visibility — verifies exactly when important emails are delivered and opened
- Legal certification — a Registered Receipt™ email is generated with every RMail Registered Email message. This receipt proves email delivery, time of delivery, and exact content that can serve as admissible evidence in a court of law
- Security — encryption is used for sensitive emails and attachments that are needed for privacy or legal compliance reasons
- Signing — the electronic signature feature generates legally binding signoffs on documents and agreements
RPost in the Cloud Empowers Not Only Individuals, But Also Enterprises
RPost has had its cloud since before the use of the word “cloud” became popular. Emails that are sent as Registered Email™ messages pass through the RPost cloud which provides a number of services, including dealing with the recipient’s email server and providing information, such as the time of delivery and when opened.
That is on an individual e-mail basis or for single users. Under the Registered Electronic Xchange rubric, RPost also provides cloud automation to organizations, enabling businesses to incorporate selected elements of the Registered Email technology into their own services or platforms. Thus, the RPost cloud also performs as a platform-as-a-service (PaaS). This is a particularly valuable option for organizations that want to use email as part of a formal business process (including those requiring privacy compliance), such as companies in regulated industries, like insurance, consumer finance, health care, law, government, and real estate.
Mesabi Musings
Ordinary emails lack certain characteristics, including guarantees that they were delivered in a timely manner, that they were safe from spying eyes, and that they met legal standards of proof. RPost enables ordinary emails to become extraordinary by overcoming these (and other) deficiencies. As a result, individuals and organizations can take common electronic communications environments, such as Microsoft Office, and enrich them with the capabilities that are part and parcel of far more formal business processes.
As an industry analyst, RPost has kindly provided me with its RMail capabilities for a number of years. Personally, I have been very happy to be able to verify that someone actually received an e-mail with an attached document that the recipient needed to review or to simply confirm a meeting when I hadn’t heard back in a timely manner. As an individual, I simply skimmed the surface of the capabilities that organizations could use for empowering their electronic communications environment. All in all, peace of mind, for senders and receivers, alike attests to the quality of RPost’s RMail service.