Only one third of UK organisations capable if searching colleagues' tactic knowledge
London & San Francisco, April 14, 2009- Recommind, the leader in search-powered information risk management (IRM) software, today announced that despite the fact that almost two thirds of organisations want the ability to search staff expertise, only one third are actually able to do so. This indicates that legacy ‘enterprise search 1.0’ solutions are woefully inadequate at meeting the sophisticated data needs of enterprises, which is seriously impacting productivity and profitability.
The independent research, which was carried out by Vanson Bourne, assessed the current information capabilities and needs of 170 UK organisations with more than 1,000 employees operating in the financial services, manufacturing, retail, healthcare and public sectors.
Businesses have traditionally focused on being able to locate data such as emails and documents; however, increasingly the information which is most valuable to businesses today rests inside the minds of the employees who have the most relevant knowledge and experience on a particular topic. Employees’ expertise or “tacit knowledge” as it is widely termed has remained a largely untapped resource as the information is often not documented or searchable. Even where ‘enterprise search 1.0’ systems are able to document expertise by using individual user profiles, it falls out of date as the onus is on individual users to manually update their profiles – all of which increases the length of time employees spend with the overall search process.
In contrast, an effective expertise location system must be able to automatically connect people to colleagues with the most relevant experience of the matter at hand to unlock the tacit knowledge that they possess. Furthermore, each user’s expertise profile must be automatically updated to reflect new user work product and experiences, which ‘enterprise search 1.0’ systems are incapable of delivering.
The research found that across all sectors 50 percent or more of those surveyed wanted to be able to locate expertise to help employees with their daily jobs. The highest demand was in the professional services sector where the figure stood at a massive 83 percent, which was followed closely by 73 percent in the public sector. This is contrasted by the findings that only 55 percent of professional services employees and a mere 27 percent of public sector employees are able to locate expertise using their current enterprise search systems. In the healthcare sector, demand was still high at 68 percent, with the figure standing at 57 percent in the financial services. In comparison, just 39 percent of respondents in the healthcare sector were able to search this valuable resource, and for financial services the figure was even lower at 29 percent.
“Knowledge and expertise are an extremely valuable business currency and not having the tools to maximise them will result in too many hours, and ultimately money, being wasted searching for an answer,” said Simon Price, European director at Recommind. “All organisations should look to capitalise on their internal know-how, especially in the current economic climate. Technology solutions that continuously catalogue employees’ previous work and experience can simplify and speed up the process, resulting in a significant increase in productivity and return on investment.”
Despite today’s knowledge economy in which all organisations should be taking full advantage of their ‘human expertise’, employees’ knowledge-sets are typically only utilised if those searching happen to be able to track down an individual through colleague relationships. This is often a lengthy and time-consuming process which does not always result in the required information/individual being found.
The inability to share and keep such knowledge constantly updated can have a significant business impact. The research found that approximately a quarter of those surveyed admitted that employees typically spend more than half a day a week searching for information they need to do their job, including fellow colleagues’ expertise. For a company with 1,000 employees, this equates to upwards of £50,000 worth of lost time a week **.
Utilising technology to automate the process of compiling, making searchable and updating employees’ profiles means that each time they produce a new piece of work, join a new team or work on a new project, their colleagues will have insight into this when required.
“In today’s workplace, employees have sophisticated search requirements and are used to being able to instantly find the documents they need – enterprises need to ensure this also applies to their own staff’s knowledge or they risk losing out on the potential gold mine of expertise,” continued Price.
*Survey of CIOs and IT directors at 170 UK organisations with more than 1,000 employees conducted by Vanson Bourne in December 2008.
** Based on the Government’s Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings which calculates median weekly pay for full time employees - http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=285.