Information is omnipresent and everywhere. Across our personal and professional lives, it is becoming more complex and more distributed than ever. And it is growing, exponentially. The total amount of information created, captured, copied, and consumed globally in 2010[1] was 2 zettabytes[2] of data. This figure has grown to 97 zettabytes today and is expected to grow to 181 zettabytes by 2025.
The explosion of data across an increasing number of information sources – from email, news feeds, diaries and social media platforms to company drives, shared drives and collaboration platforms – is adding to the information overload burden for citizens and workers.
For organizations grappling with this challenge, the solution lies in being able to break down the silos and integrate information with processes to make decisions faster. When you continuously apply information management to bring all your information together, patterns and trends emerge. Insights are gleaned and better decisions are made. That is the information advantage OpenText is powering businesses to unlock. The last two years have thrown up some new challenges for organizations of every size in every sector, in terms of how they think about information overload as a business issue, as revealed in a new OpenText study.
Following the Information Overload survey OpenText ran in March 2020, we recently relaunched the survey to assess how information overload and attitudes to data management in the workplace have changed since early 2020 as companies have continued to navigate the pandemic and distributed workforces.
According to our most recent research findings, eight in ten (80%) respondents experience information overload, driven by factors including constant information 24/7 or too many apps to check each day, contributing to their daily stress, up from 60% in 2020. Furthermore, more than a quarter (27%) say they must access eleven or more accounts, resources, tools and apps on a daily basis to access the information they need. This compares with just one in seven (15%) who said this was the case two years ago, proving that the information citizens and workers need to complete tasks reside within an increasing number of data repositories and applications.
The initial rushed panic of remote working was hard on all businesses. After more than two years in this new, distributed work setting, less than half of employees (46%) say that they feel equipped with the right digital tools to work remotely. This is particularly surprising since almost two-thirds (65%) said they felt equipped for remote work at the start of the pandemic.
More than a third (34%) of respondents indicate they cannot access corporate file systems and content as easily when working remotely while three in ten (30%) say they cannot collaborate or share files with colleagues as easily when working from home. With almost half (47%) of global workers revealing that they spend more than one hour of every working day searching for files or specific data to be able to do their job and more than four in ten (42%) saying the information they need is hard to find as it is scattered across multiple sites, files and apps, these challenges are simply compounding the stress and challenges employees feel they face in a distributed work environment.
To truly leverage data and content within their business, to facilitate collaboration in an anywhere workforce and drive faster digital transformation, businesses first must eliminate data silos and simplify information management to ensure employees can access the information they need and faster. The key to overcoming the ‘information overload’ challenge lies in automation and becoming frictionless. Allowing employees to find information quickly and easily empowers them with knowledge. Intelligent automation and integration reduce friction and simplify processes allowing employees to thrive and unlock the information advantage.
Traditional on-premise enterprise content management, or ECM, has evolved to cloud-native content applications that allow anybody to access the information they need wherever they are, and in a way which ensures data is secure, protected and can be audited in the appropriate ways. With content services, isolated processes and data repository siloes are bridged and it becomes much easier to give people access to information, roll it out and configure it globally for an entire organization. The modern way of providing content services goes beyond just managing information to being more about flexibility and extracting value from your content. You extend capabilities as you need them in a modular, iterative, and agile way.
With OpenText Content Services, businesses can integrate the enterprise applications that produce information using a central content management platform, improving information access, and ensuring governance is applied, wherever and however content is created. In addition, OpenText™ Extended ECM Platform allows organizations to improve process productivity by bridging silos and enhancing information flows between complementary solutions, including SAP® SuccessFactors®, Microsoft® Office® 365, Salesforce®, and many others.
With OpenText™ Documentum, businesses can securely and effortlessly facilitate the flow of very large volumes of business content across applications, bridging content silos and intelligently automating business processes in the most regulated business environments. All before using cloud-based solutions like OpenText™ Core Share to allow employees to share files externally and collaborate on projects while adhering to organizational policies for information management and security.
Now thirty years on from our founding, the OpenText goal remains the same as always: to help our customers use information to its fullest potential and turn that information into a competitive advantage for them. Discover how to obtain the information advantage.
Visit our website to learn more about how OpenText can help your organization’s employees to manage data more effectively and avoid ‘information overload’ at work.
[2] A zettabyte is a multiple of the unit byte that measures digital storage, and it is equivalent to 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 [1021] bytes
