The information age is making businesses smarter, but it is also making executives more stressed. Organisations are overwhelmed with the volume of data and content that needs to be managed, protected and (ideally) used to steer critical business decisions.

Decision-makers need a 360-degree view of their business environment to understand both the structured and unstructured data and content they’re working with across the entire enterprise, as well as how to leverage it for success.

According to Ragu Gurumurthy, CIO and CDO of Deloitte, many organisations understand the efficiency to be gained from data, but very few can harness the opportunities data offers to create new business lines. Executives need the right tools and solutions to fuel a holistic enterprise information management strategy. Only then can they know how they are maximising or missing value-generating opportunities.

Conducted with 180 executives across key industries who shared their knowledge and experience, a survey by ASG Technologies in partnership with Forbes Insight uncovered what decision-makers see as pressing concerns around enterprise information management. The report established that while businesses are beginning to leverage information-driven insights, their processes are far from optimised.

Here are three key areas that decision-makers should consider, when evaluating their organisation’s data management systems:

1) Data-driven decision-making positively impacts diverse areas of the organisation

When asked where information-driven decision-making has the greatest impact across the organisation (scoring at least 4 or 5 on a scale of 1 to 5), executives identified customer satisfaction/engagement (68 percent) and internal operations (68 percent) as the most positively influenced. Next were employee and manager productivity (66 percent) and sales and marketing (63 percent). When executed well, an information-driven enterprise can use data to enhance diverse areas of the organisation.

2)The speed of access is lagging way behind the speed of business

To compete in the digital era, organisations need to be able to make real-time decisions based on trusted data and deliver information on demand wherever it is needed. This reality is still far off for many enterprises, however, given the average amount of time it takes to discover and access information.

Less than half of executives (47 percent) can tap into most of their information within a reasonable period of time — defined as being available within five minutes or less. In fact, only 11 percent of executives can access information within 15 minutes, and 42 percent say it takes longer than an hour.

More alarming, for 10 percent of organisations, finding the right information often takes longer than a business day.

3) Current information management infrastructures fall short when it comes to data access

To know your business, you must know your data, which means having the right infrastructure in place to access it when needed. According to our survey, only one-third of executives consider their current enterprise information management infrastructure to be “highly effective” in enabling decision-makers to access the information they require, when required.

One in four executives say information is difficult to access because their enterprises are operating on outdated legacy systems

Specifically, one in four executives say information is difficult to access because their enterprises are operating on outdated legacy systems. When executives access enterprise data, only a small portion is accessible to analytics.

Only 21 percent of executives can report that most of their structured data is part of their analytics capabilities, and only 18 percent see content being delivered to these systems — meaning only 18 percent of content is being analysed to help decision-making.

For organisations to compete in today’s digital business landscape, they need an enterprise information management strategy that manages and leverages data and content as true assets and investments for the future.

While 65 percent of executives are satisfied with their enterprise information management system’s ability to enable decision-making, only 27 percent are highly confident that their enterprise data management (EDM) and enterprise content management (ECM) systems are well-positioned to take advantage of new technology approaches and platforms in the months and years to come.

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