30 million hours a week wasted by use of different programmes and applications in the workplace

According to research by Oracle, carried out by independent research house ICM, the equivalent of 30 million hours a week is wasted as people struggle to locate disparately stored documents, and share up-to-date information across systems.

The survey of 2,000 employees found average respondent uses more than five different applications at work on a weekly basis. The use of separate applications in this way means that workers are spending over an hour every week copying and pasting the same information between documents stored in different places and programmes, rather than using a centralised system that can pull together information from wherever it is stored in the business.

The average worker spends over an hour (61.55 minutes) a week locating documents or files either from e-mail, personal folders or in the company/shared file servers, people waste 74 minutes a week copying, pasting and re-entering the same information into different documents

Oracle found 80% of workers use their e-mail to store information and files, but 96% are open to the introduction of new technologies to help make their working practices more efficient and 40% of social network users say they are easier to use than workplace software

Andrew Gilboy, vice president director E2.0, Oracle, said, "The findings highlight that while employees are keen to work with Enterprise 2.0 tools in their everyday activities, businesses are yet to take advantage of this and implement them on a wide scale.  The real opportunity missed by not adopting Enterprise 2.0 is the ‘business productivity’ gains – as opposed to the gains that can be made in personal productivity – and the ability to accelerate business models.

 "Enterprise 2.0 tools and crowdsourcing have the ability to offer a platform for innovation for all employees, customers and partners. Areas that can benefit from this approach include employee induction, creative thinking, product lifecycle management and supply chain management.  In addition, collaboration with partners, customers, suppliers and other stakeholders is greatly increased, meaning an organisation can utilise these connections in every aspect of its business.  From product development to targeting new geographies and industries, these connections can be used to add to the bottom line."