Just 56 percent of the time can users find the information required to do their jobs, according to a new survey of more than knowledge workers from private and public sector organizations from International Data Corporation (IDC).

The analyst firm concludes unified search and analytics technologies are required in helping organisations meet their knowledge management and information retrieval objectives. 

The report, titled "The Knowledge Quotient: Unlocking the Hidden Value of Information Using Search & Content Analytics," was sponsored by search and analytics vendors Coveo and Lexalytics.

The report discusses the impact of the dramatic rise in unstructured data on knowledge worker performance and provides brief studies of organizations investing in technologies to unlock the value residing within this data. Some key findings from the report include:

1. 61 percent of knowledge workers regularly access four or more systems to get the information they need to do their jobs, and 13 percent access 11 or more systems.
2. 36 percent of a typical knowledge worker's day is spent looking for and consolidating information spread across a variety of systems.

The impact of these challenges on an organization's bottom line can be considerable. Specifically, the report states that an enterprise with 1,000 knowledge workers loses an average of $US5.7 million annually to lost productivity due to employees searching for, but not finding, relevant information.

"The IDC report underscores the struggles that many organizations face in integrating their diverse streams of knowledge and making it accessible and actionable for employees," said Diane Berry, Chief Knowledge Evangelist at Coveo. "To unlock the hidden value of their content, innovative organizations are adopting technologies that virtually synthesize their diverse structured and unstructured information, and make it accessible to knowledge workers securely in the context of their work."

"As we see from the IDC report, 44 percent of the time, workers can't find the information required to do their jobs," said Seth Redmore, VP Product Management at Lexalytics. "That's a lot of wasted time, and shows a clear need for broad use of knowledge management systems that leverage the intelligence of text mining."

To gain full access to the 25-page report, download it here.