20 February 2002
Survey of Company Directors Shows Company Information is Poorly Organised
According to findings released today of a survey of 1,050 senior IT directors, companies are not effectively utilising the amount of information available to them - either from internal or external resources such as market reports, industry studies, email, competitive data, customer surveys and sales figures.
More than two thirds of the survey respondents identified the problem as simply "not being able to find the relevant information" according to the survey conducted in November by Inxight Software, the leading provider of software for managing information in multiple languages on the Internet and within company networks.
According to the survey, 79 percent of the managers felt it was "difficult for employees or customers to retrieve specific product information." The same number also felt that the growing archives of company information and data were not organised adequately.
John Laing Inxight's chairman and CEO said: "Not being able to find the right information is an on-going problem for information workers. It's extremely frustrating when you know that certain key data exists, but you can't put your hands on it."
He continued: "Two of the most striking statistics were that 85 percent of managers and executives told us that it was commonplace for them to discover - too late - that their company owns useful information that they never knew existed. 70 percent said their employees had to spend too much time scanning documents to find out if they contain valuable information".
The survey also found that 58 percent of the managers felt it was time for organisations to adopt multi-lingual data stores and that their companies could benefit from information management tools that support such languages as French, German, Japanese and Chinese.
Laing said: "Companies today are faced with an ever-growing abundance of information. Those that lack the proper systems to access and manage their collective wisdom can be crippled, unable to find the information they need when they need it, or wasting time and money reinventing information that already exists. By implementing cutting-edge systems for organising and accessing information, companies will promote growth and can ease the pains that accompany success and expansion."
Susan Feldman, Director of Content and Retrieval Software research at IDC said: "Handling too much information, as well as not being able to find information when it is needed, constitutes a significant cost to today's enterprises". She continued "IDC have shown that a company with 1000 knowledge workers can lose up to $15 million annually in wasted productivity, time spent searching, and lost opportunity costs."
Inxight's survey included CEO's, chief information officers, chief technology officers, presidents, vice presidents and directors of technology, business development and marketing departments representing organisations in various markets, such as publishing, financial services, software manufacturing and government. All respondents were from organisations in North America.
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