In the past, communications within organisations were mostly done either by the word of mouth or by writing memos. By word of mouth, when people wanted to communicate with a person within the office, he had to either go to the desk to tell the respective person the message or do it through the phone. However, one problem with this is that the message might get distorted when passing from one person to another. Furthermore, when passing a message by word of mouth, there is no written evidence of what was said. As such, it would be very difficult to track the agreements made within the 2 parties later on.
Another way people used to communicate within organisations without the Internet were by passing memos. They would simply write a memo with their intended message to their colleague and leave it on the person's desk or in-tray. However, these memos give a person excessive paperwork and very often, the person's desk will be filled up with memos. As a result of this, these memos very often get lost and thus lose its credibility.
Companies also had a hard time communicating with people outside their office organisation, especially with overseas branches. One of the ways includes using the method known as "snail" mail today. They would send their letters over to their counterparts overseas via mail. Not only did this include a very