Cost of Retrieving Information

Accenture released earlier this month an interesting report about how 1,000 middle managers of large companies in the United States and United Kingdom gather, use and analyze information.

Some findings:

• Managers spend up to 25 percent of their time searching for information
• 59 percent said that as a consequence of poor information distribution, they miss information that might be valuable to their jobs almost every day. 
• 42 percent of respondents said they accidentally use the wrong information at least once a week.
• 53 percent said that less than half of the information they receive is valuable.
• 45 percent of respondents said gathering information about what other parts of their company are doing is a big challenge.
• 36 percent said there is so much information available that it takes a long time to actually find the right piece of data.
• On average, managers have to go to three different sources of information in order to get information about competitors, customers, project responsibility or another department.
• 57 percent said that having to go to numerous sources to compile information is a difficult aspect of managing information.

Conclusion: We sure waste a lot of time…