Information Overload: A System for Better Managing Everyday Data

Chapter 2. A LOT OF INFORMATION

Today's business is an information business. There is little doubt that information is a valuable asset that leads to organizational success; it is the driving strategy of all businesses. Recent research indicated that the majority of employees believe that their enterprise's competitiveness is affected by problems in handling information.

However, people are drowning in information. Managers complain about the barrage of information being far greater than they can handle effectively. For every decision they make, they spend more time searching for the right information, leaving them with less time for proper analyses using the acquired information.

Companies are trying to make a profit, often using information as a competitive advantage. Employees are getting more responsibility and autonomy: Empowerment, assertiveness, entrepreneurship, and independency are keywords for their new roles. Nowadays, well-informed and motivated employees are at the core of every business.

Information workers spend on average about 30 percent of the time on searching for information (this number rises to 50–60 percent for consulting and government enterprises). This search process should not be taken too literally; information that is found needs to be analyzed, processed, evaluated, organized, and stored for later reuse. The latter tasks are often neglected in the search process. Who has not spent time to find some important piece of information that, it turns out, was ...