Tech chiefs trapped in fact-finding nightmare

IT chiefs spend a third of the working week searching for the information they need to do their jobs - and when they find it most of it turns out to be useless anyway.

Business managers can spend up to two hours per day searching for information, which once located is often wrong or of little value to their job, according to research.

IT bosses in particular suffer from this with nearly half (47 per cent) saying they spend up to 30 per cent of their working week tracking down relevant information for their job.

Of the five business areas surveyed, IT saw the highest waste of received information with managers saying that on average, less than half of the information they receive (44 per cent) is of value.

IT managers feel information overload is the main obstacle to acquiring relevant info, with 42 per cent of those surveyed giving this reason.

Royce Bell, CEO of Accenture Information Management Services, which carried out the research, said managers are having great difficulty navigating a rapidly expanding sea of information - and that the situation is only "getting worse".

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Managers across all business areas also feel it is harder to get information from other departments within their own organisations than from competitors. And 45 per cent of respondents said it was a big challenge to get information from their own company compared to 31 per cent saying the same for competitors.

The majority of all respondents (59 per cent) said they miss useful information due to poor data distribution within their organisation.

The web-based survey questioned more than 1,000 middle managers across several business departments in UK and US companies with annual revenues in excess of $500m.