Was in banking industry for years, and when I started there were tons of financial terminal based systems for employees. And it was productive for very few only, learning curve was enormous and it was also very error prone.
If the same protocols/file formats were used, then it seem like it would help (since then different people can use different programs and they would then be interoperable). For email, this is already the case. For sending files, I am not sure if it is, but it could be made to do so without so much difficulty.
