“Useless” is the way respondents to an Accenture survey characterised modern information systems’ ability to meet day to day needs:
Only 11 percent of finance and accounting managers — less than for any other function — said they believe that their company has invested enough in the right technologies to help them get the information they need, and managers in this area are also the least likely to state that their company does a good job at governing how information gets distributed (selected by only 12 percent of finance and accounting managers). In addition, a greater number of IT and finance managers — 31 percent and 30 percent, respectively — than managers in any other departments said they miss valuable information more than five times a week.
This was a survey of companies with revenues north of $500 million. Information issues fall under three broad categories:
- Too much information
- No idea where to find the right information
- Never sure if they’re being presented with a complete picture
Large companies have real problems with managing data and I suspect part of the motivation behind the survey was to seed a play in that area. It certainly plays to current interest in business analytics.
The real worry is in the finding that:
40 percent of respondents said that other parts of the company are not willing to share information
If anything will kill an information discovery project, it’s culture.
Technorati Tags: business analytics, business intelligence, accenture
