Technology Drowning Managers in Info
January 5 2007
Middle managers on both sides of the Atlantic are spending up to two hours a day rummaging around for the information they need to do their jobs - yet more than 50% of what they find is of no value. The results come from a recent survey by Accenture.
Part of the problem lies in the way staff gather and store information. The majority of managers surveyed said they store information on their computer or individual e-mail accounts, with only 16% using a companywide system, such as an intranet. In addition, respondents claim to feel besieged by the increased number of information sources within their organisations – with e-mail, instant messaging and handheld devices all delivering it.
In the study of 1,009 UK and US managers, just half of those questioned believe that their employers have an adequate process for establishing what data each part of their firm needs, or a satisfactory procedure for controlling the actual information that is distributed.
As a consequence:
- 59% claim they miss information that might be valuable to their jobs because it exists somewhere else in the company and they just can't find it
- 42% of respondents said they accidentally use the wrong information at least once a week
- 45% of respondents said gathering information about what other parts of their own company are doing is a big challenge, 'though 69% said competitor information is easy to acquire.
More than a third (36%) said there is so much information available that it takes a long time to find the right piece of data. In order to get information about competitors, customers, project responsibility or another department, respondents said they have to access around three different information sources, and 57% of respondents said that having to go to numerous sources makes their jobs more difficult.
Responding to the findings, Royce Bell, CEO of Accenture Information Management Services (AIMS) said: 'People and organisations cannot keep up with the volume of information produced by technological innovation. Managers in particular are having great difficulty navigating a rapidly expanding sea of information, and the situation is only getting worse. The research highlights the need for companies to implement the right processes to weed out useless data, as well as flagging the information that might be of use to other parts of the organisation.'
Management consultancy Accenture is online at
www.accenture.com .
All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.
