Why Companies Suffer From Information Gridlock

Only a small minority of companies are making enough use of automated and collaborative tools to be considered champions of information mobility, according to a recent survey from Ricoh. The resulting report, which addresses information gridlock, indicates that a significant number of employees are considered mobile or remote workers, yet relatively few of them can access key business apps via their mobile devices. Whether staffers connect from off-site locations or in an office, their productivity is limited because of a lack of automated business document workflows. In fact, a surprising number of organizations still store important enterprise information in filing cabinets—or even in "employees' heads"—according to the research. What's needed is an investment in essential technology solutions and training to maximize the advantages of information mobility. The report defines information mobility as the seamless movement of information among paper, digital and legacy formats—from any IT platform to another—as well as the ability to find and integrate information within all repositories, whether on-premise or in the cloud. More than 290 executives from IT and lines of business at director level or above took part in the research, which was conducted by IDC.