The Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the huge US government agency that processes more than 230 million tax returns annually, has revealed its inability to preserve its employees’ emails and track those records down when needed.

For many industries data is not seen as a principle part of its operations, even in industries or companies where data is regarded as required; it is often subservient to the elements of its main business and therefore even those organisations/teams with departments such as ‘Information Management’; data is forgotten about, or disregarded, by many people as they focus on what they see as the important matter at hand.

As the automation of physical and knowledge work advances, many jobs will be redefined rather than eliminated—at least in the short term, according to Michael Chui, James Manyika, and Mehdi Miremadi, analysts at the McKinsey Global Institute in Chicago

If your most valuable team member resigned tomorrow, would you know where to find the reports, project updates or files your colleague had been working on? If you’ve ever tried to retrieve a document that has been saved to someone else’s desktop, or buried in an electronic system only the owner understands, you’ll know how time consuming this can be. An effective intranet can save you time, money and administrative headaches by ensuring that your corporate information is easily retrievable and useful.