Study says 83% of employees lose time due to document issues

 

Existing File Sharing and Document Management Solutions Do Little to Solve Expensive, Time-Consuming and Frustrating Document Collaboration Issues:-

The vast majority of knowledge workers lose time each day on document versioning issues, like searching for the right version of a file or working on an outdated document. About 9 in 10 workers whose companies use a document management system or file-sharing service still lose time to these versioning issues (86% and 90%, respectively).

Document collaboration issues are more time-consuming than not having network access, and more frustrating than locking your keys in your car. Organisations can significantly improve productivity and decrease costs by addressing these pervasive issues.

Poor document collaboration practices are very expensive, time-consuming and the source of much frustration, according to Perforce Software, which commissioned an independent survey of business professionals. Conducted online by Harris Interactive®, the Knowledge Worker Survey of 1,004 employees in the United States and the United Kingdom shows that document collaboration problems in the workplace are pervasive, frustrating and the cause of costly productivity issues—even when document sharing tools are in place. It also indicates that these issues have far-reaching consequences, including missed business opportunities, damaged reputations and poor impressions of colleagues and customers.

Document collaboration issues occur as documents pass through multiple contributors and, while doing so, are often saved as multiple versions. These widespread and time-consuming issues include such things as searching for the right version of a file, working on the wrong version of a document or having to manually enter edits from others.

While less than half (45%) of knowledge workers are familiar with the term “version issues,” the survey found that more than four in five (83%) lose or waste time each day from these problems. Issues include:

• Searching their hard drives or email inbox for the most up-to-date or correct file (73%)

• Having to wait while someone else finishes working on a document (59%)

• Manually reviewing documents to sort out the changes from one or more contributors (56%)

• Working on a document, only to realize after some time that it was the wrong or outdated file (47%)

Interestingly, of the 69% of knowledge workers whose companies use a document management or file-sharing service, about 9 in 10 still experience document versioning issues (86% and 90%, respectively), indicating that existing solutions do little to solve these problems.

“This study helps to quantify an issue that nearly everyone experiences in one way or another,” explained Christopher Seiwald, CEO and founder of Perforce. “Current collaboration practices and systems do not mitigate the versioning issues that hinder an organisation’s ability to collaborate on documents. We’ve largely solved this issue for software development teams, which are the most complex collaboration environments, but most business teams have yet to adequately address the root of the problem—version management.”

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