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INFORMATION TASKS ARE CENTRAL TO TODAY'S ORGANIZATION
When productivity rates leap, so do enterprise profits. In the past century, we have automated blue-collar work, wringing more products out of every worker hour. With the economy now becoming information-based rather than industrial, the next frontier is to make information work more productive. It is no wonder, then, that organizations are trying to analyze business processes in order to streamline them; eliminate duplication; and automate the predictable, repeatable steps that any such process includes. Automating repetitive steps and eliminating those that waste time will increase information worker productivity and save an organization millions of dollars. But information work - white-collar work - is difficult to analyze. The product of knowledge work is ideas, documents, data. How do we quantify both the number and quality of ideas that are produced?
HOW DO YOU QUANTIFY INFORMATION WORK?
This Content Technologies multiclient study set out to answer precisely this question. During the summer of 2004, IDC surveyed 600 U.S. companies in three size categories and in four vertical industries - financial services, government, manufacturing, and healthcare. We asked them how long they spent at various content-related tasks and what repetitive tasks they performed that were prime targets for automation or improvement, such as rekeying data or reformatting documents. We also asked them what authoring software, content management, or retrieval applications they had either developed or purchased and what content provider services they had subscribed to; how they were using them; and what the process was for deciding what to buy or build and how to implement it. We found out what their collaboration patterns were, both inside and outside the organization. Then we interviewed customers to fill in the cracks in the data with qualitative information.
The goal was to determine how content-related tasks were performed and what the prevailing attitudes were to investing in and using content management and retrieval applications. What were the advantages? What were the barriers to use and to investment?
WHAT WE FOUND
We took the data that we had gathered on average number of hours spent on each task and, based on an average information worker salary of $60,000 per year, calculated how much the annual cost would be per worker to an organization. Table 1 and Figure 1 show the average number of hours spent on the major information-related tasks that use technologies such as authoring software and content management and retrieval software. Table 1 also shows costs to an organization for one information worker earning $60,000 per year, including benefits, or a salary of $45,000 per year plus an additional 30% in benefits paid. The numbers are based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics annual salary figures published in Crain's Chicago Business in June 2004. They don't include additional overhead or equipment. Note that all workers do not perform all tasks.
Email, as most information workers will agree, is by far the most time-consuming activity, followed by creating documents and then finding and analyzing information. The costs for these activities are staggering, but the number of hours spent is credible, based also on other surveys we have done, which support these figures.
Any dent that an organization can make in the hours information workers spend on any of these tasks will have immediate payoff. And that is what our interviews confirmed. Investment, for instance, in content management software immediately improved the productivity and efficiency of one company by 30%. And that is without the intangible benefits.
Table 2 and Figure 2 show some of the information tasks that waste time, the amount of time that our respondents spent on them, as well as the cost of these tasks to an organization. These tasks are repetitive and could be automated or streamlined with improved software.
As organizations attempt to operate within leaner budgets, these figures become even more significant. They show that it is sensible to invest in content management, in unified search of email and all other collections of information, and in high-quality content from trusted sources. Failing to do so can affect the bottom line. Conversely, improving content management and access helps organizations control costs and add revenue.
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