Useless information at your fingertips

Managers spend more than a quarter of their time searching for information needed to do their job and, when they do find it, it's likely to be incorrect.

This is according to the results of an Accenture survey released earlier this month. The online study polled more than 1 000 middle managers in the US and UK about the way they gather, use and analyse information.

According to 59% of respondents, the biggest headache for managers is their organisations' apparent inability to provide the right person access to the right information, at the right time, in the right place and in the right format.

Nearly three out of five respondents said that as a consequence of poor information distribution, they miss information that might be valuable to their jobs almost every day, because it exists somewhere else in the company and they just cannot find it.

In addition, 42% of respondents said they accidentally use incorrect information at least once a week, and 53% said that less than half the information they receive is valuable.

If you are in IT management, your job is likely to be even more frustrating. IT managers said that, on average, less than half (44%) of the information they receive for their job is of value. In addition, nearly half (47%) of IT managers - more than any other department - said they spend 30% of their work week trying to track down relevant information for their jobs.

Not surprisingly, 57% of all respondents said that having to use numerous sources to compile information is a difficult aspect of their jobs.

While the results are based on the experiences of US and UK companies, these pains are very typical of problems experienced by their South African counterparts, according to Sean Katzen, senior executive at Accenture.

He elaborates: "With our SA customers, we have found that the ability of business users to access vast amounts of complex and varied information from multiple systems, often complicates business processes and leads to poor decision making.

"Usually, this is as a consequence of requirements not being understood when developing new business intelligence (BI) solutions, which then results in redesign and redevelopment, creating significant user frustration."

While SA companies generally have well-defined BI solution development methodologies, the process of diagnosing and evaluating BI needs is often poorly implemented, says Katzen.

"By spending sufficient time on the BI diagnosis before the solution design, and conducting an annual BI diagnosis refresh, assists in ensuring a business-relevant and current BI solution", he advises.

Inadequate upfront needs assessment and requirements analysis also featured prominently in the Accenture survey. Only half of all managers surveyed felt their companies have established adequate processes to determine what data each part of an organisation needs.

Katzen will provide additional insight into lessons learnt, reasons for BI failure and how to avoid them during his keynote at the ITWeb BI 2007 Conference, from 20-21 February.

His presentation, "Global Best Practices: What works and what doesn't work", will examine global practices for successful BI implementation.