Another in our series of answers to readers' IT queries. This month, experts Paul Rutherford, chief marketing officer for Clearswift, Danny Singer, MD of Noetica, Simon Brough, communications consultant at voice and data distributor Crane Telecommunications, independent consultant John Frazer-Robinson and David Birch, consultant at Hyperion (and a columnist for Online) look at what's bothering you.

· We often hear reports of email misuse but how do we ensure our employees are being responsible without looking through their email boxes? The situation seems to be made even more complex by legislation such as the Data Protection Act and RIP bill.

PR: While email is an indispensable tool for conducting business today, email misuse can be disastrous. It can ruin businesses, sink careers, send stock prices plummeting, and create public relations nightmares. Despite ongoing reports of email security breaches and disciplinaries that have raised awareness of these threats, many organisations are still failing to establish e-policies. An organisation's e-policy states what is and what isn't acceptable use of email and should be clearly communicated to all employees. They are designed to protect the employee as much as the employer.

If you are still concerned that you are at risk, then you should consider enforcing your e-policy with the appropriate security software. Part of the problem is that companies are put off addressing the issue because of the legislation surrounding email monitoring. The Information Commission recently updated its code of practice for the monitoring of email at work. In short, provided employees are aware of what their employers do to secure email, then there is no risk of breaching privacy rights. So it all comes down to defining the organisation's e-policy and educating employees.

· We are a telemarketing company working with a number of small charities. Our telesales operations are haemorrhaging from excessive staff turnover, and training costs for new telesales agents are spiralling out of control. We have a paper-based office and making the step to an IT-based operation is being delayed by the huge array of products on the market. Is there any software out there to meet our simple requirements?

DS: The key is to move the business knowledge from your telesales agents' heads into your IT systems. The fewer things that the agents need to memorise or learn, the quicker and cheaper it will be to utilise them to their full potential.

The solution lies with a user-friendly telephone-call scripting package that offers your experienced front line staff the chance to translate the business knowledge that they possess from their years of experience into well-designed intelligent scripts without having to resort to programming or complex IT.

These scripts have the capability to guide agents intelligently through telephone calls, placing all the relevant information at their fingertips at the right moment. You can recruit almost anyone with basic computer skills and they should perform at a level that you would associate with your most experienced staff. Such packages exist at affordable prices. You can use them to transfer precious business knowledge into the system once instead of having to do it each time you train a new agent.

· My company has expanded and we have acquired new branches with existing voice and data infrastructure. I want to consolidate new with existing, without restricting my network in the future. What should be my focus?

SB: For most small businesses, it is going to be financially unrealistic to move to a single communications architecture overnight. This being the case, the focus should be on how and when you are able to upgrade your network.

The how part? In order to run a future-proofed network you should give serious consideration to putting in an infrastructure capable of running both voice and data. In the SME sector, probably less than 1% of the infrastructure can support this function, thus the task is clearly to deploy a single network capable of supporting voice and data.

The when part? Over the next year, having a migration strategy to move to a single network architecture will be essential. Budget will determine how quickly you can achieve this, with the key strategy being one of gradual migration. The process for achieving this is relatively simple: audit all existing data infrastructure to assess its ability to carry voice and data, carry out life-cycle costing and formulate a replacement schedule to upgrade to voice and data capable infrastructure then deploy your chosen voice solution when the network is 100% ready, or deploy a solution that can migrate with you from the start, without losing such assets as the handsets.

· I've been running a record label for five years and we're now at the stage where the telephone never rings, but the amount of email we receive (especially concerning order fulfilment) is more than our five office staff can handle. Can you help?

JF-R: This could actually be good news. A recent report from Forrester found that telephone inquiries cost on average £20.40, whereas email costs just £6.24! That said, I'd hate to see what sounds like a fascinating business drown under email.

Consider the three principles of email management. Message handling (orders hitting one email box, questions hitting another); message tracking (linking all correspondence to form an audit trail); and message routing (ensuring the right person responds, in terms of both expertise and availability).

Atmyside (atmyside.com) has software that implements these principles. The next stage is interacting with customers by live chat. Forrester say the average cost of such inquiries is a mere £0.52. eGain (< ahref="http://www.egain.com" target="_new">www.egain.com) is the company to talk to about this.

Alternatively, how about setting up an email forum, so customers can answer each others questions? This can easily be done with software such as iMail from Ipswitch (www.ipswitch.com).

· I've recently read a lot about the chip and Pin trial in Northampton. What is it and how will it affect me?

DB: Chip and Pin is the name for the UK's programme to replace the traditional magnetic strip credit and debit cards with smart cards. These cards have a tiny computer chip on them. When customers use them in shops, they will enter a four digit Pin (as they already do at ATMs) instead of signing a piece of paper. The computer chip can check this Pin itself, and therefore know that the card is being used by its rightful owner.

The timetable is being driven by the impending "liability shift" which comes into force on January 1 2005. To oversimplify slightly, this means that the liability for fraudulent magnetic stripe transactions will shift from banks to retailers on that date. Hence retailers are busy installing new point-of-sale equipment to read the smart cards and new keypads for customers to punch in their Pins.

At first glance, this change appears to have limited impact on consumers, who will merely input a Pin rather than sign a piece of paper, but the implications are more profound. For one thing, card fraud should decrease significantly (it fell by 80% in France after chip and Pin was introduced). For another, consumers will be able to use the cards to make secure purchases in many places that they currently cannot (eg vending machines, their digital television boxes and their PCs).