A new survey shows that North Americans consider e-mail their most valuable communication tool while at work. The study, conducted by KRC Research and sponsored by the Oracle Corporation, asked 500 Canadians and 500 Americans how important e-mail and other communications were to their daily working lives.

While Canadians named e-mail as the top communications tool (44 per cent), respondents also relied on the phone (28 per cent) and face-to-face conversation (15 per cent) for business.

The survey also found that Canadian users felt that e-mail made them more productive (53 per cent), in fact 53 per cent stated that their productivity dropped if they are away from their computer and don't have access to e-mail. Respondents appeared to view e-mail and other electronic forms of communication as a way to increase productivity, with 68 per cent saying they felt they could accomplish more if they could collaborate with fellow employees by sharing and editing documents online.

Users also said that they rely on e-mail to stay in touch with their company when they can't be there physically, with 65 per cent saying that it was important for them to have e-mail access while they were out of the office.

Canadians were more apt to send e-mail around the world (18 per cent) than their American counterparts (8 per cent).

The full survey is available at http://www.oracle.com/ip/deploy/cs/theme_pages/user_research.pdf.

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