We’ve all said it at some point, hands on our hips, spitting feathers:

‘Well, THAT meeting could totally have been an email!  What a massive waste of time.’

There’s nothing more frustrating than spending an hour in a sweaty meeting room only to find everything could’ve been resolved with a couple of 30-second messages.

Recent research by Shopify found a 30-minute meeting with three employees costs anywhere from $700 to $1,600. But if there’s an exec in the meeting, it’s $2,000 or more.

With numbers like these, it’s no wonder there’s a big push in many organisations towards replacing meetings with emails.

But with inboxes groaning, what about the emails that should also have been something else?

Original users of the humble electronic message in the 80s signed off their emails with the rather jaunty ‘Electronically yours.’ Email was simply a letter replacement.

But these days we use it for so many more things.

We use it to engage employees, win new business, forge relationships with clients and colleagues from scratch.  And critically, to manage projects.

Now as you know, I’m a big email fan.  But email isn’t always the best choice for project management.

In fact, when clients of ours replace their project management emails with centralised software like Asana, Wrike or Trello, their inboxes shrink dramatically and everyone saves time and effort. (We use Wrike and love it.)

With all the information stored centrally, everyone can get updates whenever they need them, without emails being pinged relentlessly back and forth all day.

So ask yourself – the meeting that could have been an email, could it now be a piece of software instead?