Many business leaders straddle the economic mandate to improve a company’s efficiencies with the realities of maintaining the status quo – especially in a tight economic environment. This is especially true in managing the volumes of generated documentation and collected information.

Consider these statistics:

• It has been estimated a typical enterprise with 1,000 knowledge workers wastes $2.5 million to 3.5 million per year searching for nonexistent information, failing to find existing information, or recreating information that cannot be found.
• A survey of 2,600 top managers in FastCompany Magazine found that executives waste an estimated six weeks per year searching for lost documents – bridging the quest for information from the office cubes and the executive suite.
• Of the total eight hours wasted each week in paper document management, a business spends one hour finding documents, one hour finding it difficult to share documents (for various reasons), one hour in distribution and storage, and one half hour in archiving and retrieving.
• With the investment of time, energy, manpower, and money, the U.S. Small Business Administration found that 80 percent of papers that are filed are never referenced again. The 20 percent that need to be referenced are difficult to locate in a timely manner. In addition, storing static documentation without utilizing technology to have those resources generate business opportunities is business opportunity lost.

The Gartner Group’s 2009 annual survey of CIOs found that many enterprises still struggle to achieve the promised benefits from existing investments in enterprise content management. The report also states that organizations need to strike a balance between cost optimization and being able to grow and transform the business.

Top executives surveyed in the report set three business priorities:

• Improve business processes
• Reduce enterprise cost
• Improve enterprise workforce effectiveness

Gartner believes that in some instances, enterprise content management is a core requirement to achieving these critical business priorities. However, as business evaluates the investment of implementing a document management solution, particularly in this era of tight budgets and increased economic pressure, Gartner adds there is no need to ignore critical nature and need for a content management system. Its report states: "What is required is a clear focus on tactical actions that can bring modest to significant benefits."

Next: Why Enterprise wide?