Modern businesses rely heavily on data and when employees aren’t able to access it quickly, the bottom line suffers.
This is according to a new report from intelligent search company Sinequa and research firm APQC, which claims that reliance on data has become even greater since the pandemic.
Polling more than 200 high-level knowledge management (KM) and IT leaders for the report, the two companies found that, in 81 percent of cases, employees relied more on information management tools and solutions in 2020 than in previous years.
This rise in usage led to greater strains on these technologies, resulting in employees often not finding what they were looking for quickly enough. For 58 percent of the respondents, the inability to find data quickly had a serious impact on productivity.
When employees struggle to find data quickly, they become frustrated. That frustration often finds its way down to customers, through sales and service representatives, who find it difficult to locate relevant information when responding to customer inquiries.
“Adapting to the pandemic has been difficult for all businesses over the past year, but remote work has raised the importance of good knowledge management to a whole new level,” said Jeff Evernham, VP Product Strategy at Sinequa.
“It’s positive to see that many organizations know they have disconnects between information systems and are taking action. It’s essential that they act swiftly to provide both in-office and remote employees with the tools to coordinate and find the information they need, or they risk lowering productivity across the business and negatively impacting the organization’s bottom line.”