Useless Data Prompts Useless Time
Useless Data Prompts Useless Time
January 10, 2007: According to an Accenture survey, middle managers are spending far too much time sifting through incorrect information to find relevant to material for their work.
The results of the online survey conclude that almost a quarter (or two hours) of a middle manager’s day is devoted to searching information relevant to their work. More the 50 percent of the information found is reported to be irrelevant or have no actual value to them whatsoever.
Over 1,000 middle managers were surveyed for the study across five function areas including customer service, finance and accounting, HR, IT and sales and marketing. The respondent were located in both the US and UK and were screened from companies with reported annual revenues of more than US$500 million.
Obtaining poor quality information resulted in 59 percent of respondents claiming they miss out on information that might actually be valuable to their daily workloads. It’s a problem that left half of managers reporting that their organisations are failing to provide effecting measures to govern information distribution.
Of more concern to organisations could be use of incorrect information. 42 percent of respondents said they accidentally use incorrect information at least once a week.
But some of the more surprising results revolve around the difficulties employees have in gaining information about the organisation they actually work for. 45 percent of managers said gathering information about other parts of their organisations is a major challenge. Interestingly, it’s not quite as difficult to find out about a competitor, only 31 percent said gathering information about a competitor is a problem.
Royce Bell, CEO of Accenture Information Management Services (AIMS) believes the findings prove that organisations are failing to deliver the right information to employees. It’s a problem further exasperated by technological trends and innovation. “Manager in particular are having great difficulty navigating a rapidly expanding sea of information, and the situation is only going to get worse,” he says.
Perhaps it’s not so much innovation in technology, but rather lack of employee guidance for using such technology. The majority of respondents surveyed said they store most of their information on their own computer or in email accounts, with just 16 percent reporting to use a collaborative workspace like an intranet portal.
Accenture says the overall findings of the study indicate an information overload, occurring predominantly due to the proliferation of sources for accessing content. Accenture points to emerging search technologies as being the best solution for solving the flood of useless data.