4 September 2008

Without one person taking responsibility for information management, productivity and communication will be hindered, and the business will suffer

Michael Paulson, CTO at Avanade UK Independent research commissioned by IT consultancy Avanade found that ‘information overload’ caused by the rise in popularity of tools for sharing knowledge across the enterprise, is a problem in 84 per cent of UK enterprises.

The report further found that information overload creates problems with productivity (affecting 81 per cent of enterprises), damages lines of communication (74 per cent) and causes an inability to differentiate between essential and non-essential data (62 per cent of senior managers say workers waste time when they cannot swiftly locate important data).

However, the research also found that 81 per cent of UK senior managers place responsibility for information management with individual departments rather than with IT.

“IT leaders need to wake up to the disconnect between employees and information,” said Michael Paulson, CTO at Avanade UK. “The new generation of information hubs are easy to implement and attractive to businesses keen to improve information sharing, reduce telecoms bills and travel costs, and enable staff to work more effectively. However, piecemeal collaboration deployments can lead to a new wave in storage explosion, disconnected data and information overload.”

“Organisations need a new breed of IT specialist, the enterprise collaboration architect,” said Paulson. “They will need a deep understanding of the architectural, operational and governance impacts of collaboration technologies and will sit next to enterprise security and information architects.”

Paulson concluded: “Without one person taking responsibility for information management, productivity and communication will be hindered, and the business will suffer.”