As the pace of digitization continues to accelerate around the world, organizations are inundated with ever-increasing volumes of data. George Harb, Regional Vice President for ANZ at OpenText, outlines how organizations can successfully combat increasing information overload.
While information is the most valuable commodity in the digital age, information overload can undermine the success of any digital transformation effort. This is because the volume, speed and variety of information that organizations must manage, store and protect often exceeds the functional capabilities of the technology systems they have in place to manage information.
As a result, when information overload occurs, it often leads to suboptimal decision-making and limits the progress of digital transformation initiatives.
This problem has worsened during the pandemic with the rise of hybrid traffic. Organizational employees rely on quick access to the information they need to do their jobs, and they need the right digital tools to ensure seamless access to information wherever they work. Without these critical components, productivity suffers.
Recent OpenText research revealed that only two in five Australian workers (42 per cent) feel they have the right digital tools to work from home, compared to 66 per cent at the start of the pandemic.
To top it all off, whether they work from home or from a company office, 41 percent of Australian employees report that they routinely spend an average of one or more hours a day searching for specific work files or information on company networks or shared systems. just to do their job.
Living in a pandemic has exacerbated the effects of information overload
The global pandemic has not only spurred new ways of working and accelerated digital transformations, it has effectively shortened a decade of change into two. However, the speed of this change has made a huge difference in the extent to which workers are experiencing information overload compared to two years ago.
Our recent research found that 80 per cent of Australian workers suffer from information overload, compared to just two in five (40 per cent) who felt the same way in 2020.
Some of the key factors of information overload include too much information across devices, constant information bombardment, too many apps to check to do their jobs, and too many passwords to remember.
As a result, 47 per cent of Australian employees say the amount of information they need to process every day negatively affects their performance at work, 48 per cent say it increases their stress levels and 37 per cent say it has a negative effect on job satisfaction.
This situation also creates a security nightmare for businesses, as half of all workers resort to using personal file sharing tools for their work. These same workers also think they are doing the right thing because they believe their organizations have no policies preventing them from using unofficial tools.
The reason they use these solutions is because they feel they cannot easily collaborate with colleagues or have easy access to shared resources when working from home. More than one-third of workers also struggle with not having the same set-up at home as they do at the office.
A Guide to Alleviating Information Overload
The good news is that information overload problems can be solved and companies with a hybrid workforce can achieve an “information advantage” by implementing some simple strategies.
The first step is to create a single source of truth. With an enterprise content management system, businesses can eliminate data silos and create a central platform that simplifies access to information.
The second step is to integrate applications that allow workers to access data from legacy systems, such as Microsoft Office 365 and Salesforce.
Using cloud platforms is the third step to achieving the information advantage, as they offer the same access regardless of where workers are located. Cloud platforms facilitate collaboration and have the advantage of being managed by a cloud service provider (CSP), minimizing the burden of managing IT systems internally.
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By leveraging these tools, businesses can ease information overload and streamline their digital operations. Employees no longer need to work with dozens of applications to achieve good business results.
As hybrid work becomes the new norm, organizations must implement tools to effectively and sustainably manage data and combat information overload. By using cloud systems and providing a single source of truth, businesses can achieve these goals while their employees work from anywhere, whether from home or the office.
The rise of the digital age and access to efficient and low-cost data collection on an automated basis has brought us more information than at any other point in history. Information management is no longer just a personal problem, it is also an organizational and collective problem that employers must address.