Accenture Information Management Services has published findings of a survey they have conducted on availability of information to business users. Their findings state that middle managers spend more than a quarter of their time searching for informatino necessary to their jobs, and when they do find it, it's often wrong.
Here's an excerpt:
"About half a century ago, Peter Drucker coined the term "knowledge worker" to describe a new class of employee whose basic means of production was no longer capital, land or labor, but rather the productive use of knowledge. Today these knowledge workers, who might better be called professionals, represent a large and growing percentage of the employees of the world's biggest corporations. In industries such as financial services, health care, high tech, pharmaceuticals, media and entertainment, professionals now account for more than 25% of the workforce, and in some cases undertake most typical key line activities. These talented people are the innovators of new business ideas. They make it possible for companies to deal with today's rapidly changing and uncertain business environment, and they produce and manage the intangible assets that are the primary way the companies in a wide array of industries create value. The purpose of the online survey of more than 1,000 middle managers of large companies in the United States and United Kingdom was to uncover wide-ranging insights about the way they gather, use and analyze information.
Among the key findings: Managers spend up to two hours a day searching for information, and more than 50% of the information they obtain has no value to them. In addition, only half of all managers believe their companies do a good job in governing information distribution or have established adequate processes to determine what data each part of an organization needs.
Nearly three out of five respondents (59%) said that as a consequence of poor information distribution, they miss information that might be valuable to their jobs almost every day because it exists somewhere else in the company and they just cannot find it. In addition, 42% of respondents said they accidentally use the wrong information at least once a week, and 53% said that less than half the information they receive is valuable.
In addition, 45% of respondents said gathering information about what other parts of their company are doing is a big challenge, whereas only 31% said that competitor information is hard to get.
More than half (57%) of respondents said that having to go to numerous sources to compile information is a difficult aspect of managing information for their jobs. In order to get information about competitors, customers, project responsibility or another departments, respondents said they have to go to three different information sources on average. In addition, 40% of respondents said that other parts of the company are not willing to share information, and 36% said there is so much information available that it takes a long time to actually find the right piece of data.