Lost documents costing businesses time and money

The recent study commissioned by EMC Australia with analysis provided by independent IT industry analyst firm Hydrasight has found that Australian businesses spend more than 20 hours per week on average looking for difficult-to-find records. Furthermore, the study finds that mid-sized organisations spend almost twice this amount of time and only a small number (10%) of organisations were ‘very confident’ that documents relating to commitments and obligations made by staff were recorded, complete and retrievable.

The group studied, which consisted predominantly of records managers, also estimated that individually they spent, on average, more than three hours per week searching for records that are difficult to find.

Independent analyst firm Hydrasight analysed the EMC survey results and suggests that the same records managers who responded to the survey are likely to be underestimating the effort required in locating difficult-to-find or misplaced records inside their own organisation. Hydrasight says this is because they typically have a narrower view of business records and are often more confident of their own classification and retrieval capabilities.

General 'information-rich' workers, however, are likely to spend a considerably higher percentage of time seeking the information they require because their needs extend beyond formally managed records and into semi-formal content, including ‘knowledge management’.

Fiona Sims, EMC Senior Marketing Manager for Content Management and Archiving, said Australian businesses are spending far too much time looking for information.

“It has never been more important to be demanding the highest levels of efficiency from all areas of the business and this is an area where there is a significant opportunity for serious improvement, where businesses can drive higher productivity with new document discovery tools, which are proven to maximise resources,” said Sims.

John Brand, Research Director at Hydrasight, said, “Organisations may also be underestimating the potential impact that remote and mobile computing may be having on their information governance policies and practices.

“Businesses need to get on top of this issue now, as the volume and level of complexity in managing corporate records is only going to increase. Those organisations using traditional discovery approaches will struggle to keep up, particularly when it comes to compliance requirements, legal discovery and better managing records at the remote device location.”

Other findings to come from the study include:

• Responding to a 'typical' customer or constituent case or enquiry could take over eight hours to complete;
• The ratio of corporate information assets has continued to increase in favour of electronic records, with over 50% of documents created or saved by the organisations surveyed in the last year, saved electronically;
• Only 10% of those surveyed are very confident that documents related to commitments and obligations made by themselves and their staff were recorded, complete and retrievable;
• Organisations may be underestimating the potential impact that remote and mobile computing is having on their information governance policies and practices.

In analysing the survey results, Hydrasight’s Brand noted that “the study results indicate, more importantly, a significant shift in information governance skills and practices from classification and security of information to easier (yet still secure) access and retrieval. Information governance professionals must ensure that the best technology and information management systems are in place within their organisation to enable seamless and time-efficient location and retrieval of applicable business records.

“It will be increasingly important for organisations to seriously examine and facilitate ‘embedded’ records management practices wherever possible,” Brand said.

Sixty information governance professionals were interviewed about particular strengths and pain points in their organisation’s current information governance processes for this study.