Searching through corporate IT systems is costing the UK economy £6.2bn every year as workers struggle to find the information they need to do their jobs, according to research by open source enterprise search vendor Simplexo.
The UK-based company found that 24% of respondents spent over a day searching for required information while 19% said it took between two and three days. Over a third of respondents said that they could not find all the necessary data from systems such as CRM, email or accounting programs.
This is costing the UK economy £6.2bn every year. According to the Office for National Statistics there are 25 million office workers in the UK. Those workers who spend a day looking for information total 6 million (24%), equating to £5.2bn in lost time, Simplexo believes.
The 19% of workers who spend two to three days searching for information total 4.75 million of the UK office worker population, costing the economy a further £1.02bn.
Simplexo’s CEO, Alistair Handyside, said: “The cost of working with inadequate information and inefficient search capabilities is one of the most pressing threats to any competitive business.
“But the solution doesn’t have to involve a long consultancy engagement and a huge price tag. Simplexo was designed for simplicity – rapid installation and deployment, immediate productivity gains, and fast ROI. We don’t include a complex BI system; we just help you to stop wasting your time looking for information so you can start using it instead.”
The survey also revealed that 26% of respondents still had to request help from the IT department when conducting a search and 40% could only carry out one search at a time.
