Middle managers spend more than a quarter of their time searching for information necessary to their jobs, and when they do find it, it is often wrong, according to results of an Accenture study.

The proliferation of different information sources within organizations was revealed by the survey as the most important reason why managing information is proving difficult.

Among the key findings:

• WASTED TIME:
• Managers spend up to two hours a day searching for information
• 42% said they accidentally use the wrong information at least once a week
• 57% of respondents said that having to go to numerous sources to compile information is a difficult aspect of managing information for their jobs
• NO VALUE:
• More than 50% of the information managers obtain has no value to them
• 53% said that less than half of the information they receive is valuable
• POOR MANAGEMENT:
• Only half of all managers believe their companies do a good job in governing information distribution or have established adequate processes
• 59% said that as a consequence of poor information distribution, they miss information that might be valuable to their jobs almost every day
• POOR FUNDING:
• Only 11% of finance and accounting managers — less than for any other function — said they believe that their company has invested enough in the right technologies to help them get the information they need

The amount of wasted time and money is staggering.

Every year there are several studies touting the same thing: employees are wasting too much time searching for information. But no one in senior management (few) believes these studies. However, I and the staff at Prescient spend hundreds of hours a year inside medium and large size corporations and not-for-profits and find the same thing from the many hundreds of managers and employees we talk to: “we can’t find anything.”

Staff at all levels are wasting far too much time searching for information and the intranet is often a cruel hoax; often touted as the ‘one-stop’ source or gateway to ‘all your information needs’ the intranet almost always fails the unreasonable expectation. The problem is part planning, part information architecture, part process, part people, and part funding.

If corporations would spend more money on their intranets, instead of treating it as a cost center, these same corporations would have more productive employees. Ironically, CEOs and senior management are absolutely obsessed with employee productivity. Employee productivity, along with competitive advantage and shareholder return, is a major priority. But little is done aside from cost cutting.

The onus is on you, you the intranet manager or consultant. You have to build the business case that sells the benefit for rebuilding or redesigning the intranet in such a way that employees spend less time searching, and more time doing their jobs.

To measure and increase the value of your intranet, please dowload the free white paper, Finding ROI.

Read more…

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Measuring Intranet Value: Proving & Delivering ROI

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