63% of Irish businesses admit to struggling with too many systems
In an era marked by an explosion of documents, information and data, a recent survey of industry leaders, carried out by document and information management consultancy, Convergent, sheds light on a critical challenge faced by businesses, namely the struggle to manage and effectively utilise their growing volumes of documents and information. The results, drawn from information management stakeholders across a wide array of industries including pharmaceutical, finance, healthcare, technology, engineering and construction, reveal the urgency for a better strategy, and solutions for managing documents and information.
A striking 63% of Irish businesses report using up to 10 systems and applications to store information. Alarmingly, almost 24% of respondents operate with more than 10 systems. Nik Healy (pictured above), Solutions Director with Convergent, explained: “This fragmentation of systems contributes to significant numbers of information silos that lead to duplication, version, and information trust issues. The disconnection of information, and related content chaos and sprawl across paper, spreadsheets, systems, folders, and emails prohibits information from flowing. This results in inefficiencies and manual processes, and also restricts reporting and business intelligence opportunities.”
Despite advances in technology, 42% of those surveyed are still heavily reliant on paper. With information sprawled in lots of places, many businesses are drowning in information and are unable to harness its full potential. 82% said that finding the information is the most difficult aspect; while 63% admitted they couldn’t trust that it would be the correct version if they happened to find it.
Nik Healy continued: “Finding and validating information carries a cost, in both time and money, especially for highly valuable knowledge workers. The findings underscore the necessity for solutions where information is trusted within a single source of truth. For any business to perform optimally it relies on its documents and information being available easily, quickly and securely. But when that information is spread across lots of disconnected systems and networks it’s hard to find, so true business automation is not achievable.”
Convergent’s survey revealed a near-unanimous desire for improvement, with an overwhelming 97% of respondents expressing interest in investing in solutions that enable information to flow seamlessly and securely throughout their organisation, highlighting a clear recognition of the need for more integrated and streamlined information management solutions.
“For automation to be truly efficient it also needs to be expandable beyond a single department use. Information management solutions must extend beyond a single automation process and ensure information flows throughout a business, is expandable across departments, on demand, anywhere, any time,” he added.
84% of respondents said they would use AI to streamline business processes to reduce manual effort, however this is only achievable once Content Chaos issues have been overcome. Nik Healy concluded: “AI has the potential to dramatically improve business processes and operations. But it’s important to note that the huge potential of AI can only be leveraged once the existing Content Chaos issues have been tackled and addressed. AI solutions generate and process huge volumes of information, and organisations must have an information management foundation fit for purpose to cater for this volume.”
