Employees are becoming increasingly overwhelmed by the large volumes of company information they handle each day, and organisations need to improve the management of data to grow efficiencies – and the bottom line.
According to the findings of a study by Canon – which involved 3 800 in depth interviews across 24 market segments across Europe and Africa, including South Africa – organisations need to drastically improve the management of their most valuable commodity – information.
“We work in a highly connected, information economy, but we don’t get taught how to handle information. Furthermore, in many companies, there aren’t systems in place to store and manage information effectively. This impacts productivity,” says Warren Lock, B2B Marketing Canon South Africa.
Canon’s research showed that the technology for storing information exists in majority of companies, with central servers being a norm. Yet a worrying 41% of respondents still choose to store information on individual devices and around half don’t believe their companies’ information storage systems are well organised or efficient to use.
On average, poor standardisation of work practices and procedures for storing information results in about 25 minutes being wasted by individuals every day in their search for historical documents.
In South Africa specifically, 72% of respondents said that their organisation’s information is stored on central servers, while 63% reported that information is stored on individual devices like laptops, tablets and smart phones. 40% of respondents indicated that their organisations still rely on paper-based systems for storing information, and 11% use discs.
Workers in smaller companies, and those in non-management roles, tend to work with a greater proportion of information in paper format. Only 14% of respondents have made the move to the cloud for storing information.
Less than half (45%) of respondents reported that their company has standardised system for efficiently managing information, and only 48% agree that their organisation’s information storage system is well organised.
More than half (55%) also said that poor organisation of information has a negative impact on their ability to serve both internal and external customers. In short, poor information management is affecting their ability to do their jobs.
“Without adequate systems in place, information can get lost because people do not store their work centrally; email systems get over-loaded because people send docs as email attachments; it is difficult to maintain document version controls, and productivity is greatly affected when people have to waste time looking for the information that they need.
“Duplication of work is another big waste of time. According to 53% of our South African respondents, there is often a duplication of work because information is not effectively shared across teams or functions. The majority (63%) agreed that better storage of information would make it easier for people across the enterprise to access, use and share information,” says Lock.
He concludes: “These findings reflect a relatively poor emphasis on information management by South African companies. There is space for improvement. Certainly, in this mobile era where an increasing number of companies are allowing employees to work remotely and on the move, implementing standardised ways of managing information, and storing it centrally is becoming more pertinent.
“Now is the time for CIOs and IT managers to take control of their organisations’ information management systems if they are to improve their companies’ productivity. It comes down to placing focus on staff training, standardising processes, and implementing effective systems for central storage of information.”