SmartBiz IT Research Library

It's fair to say that many businesses could be doing a better job of increasing their visibility into their operational and planning environments. Although they sit on deep wells of organizational data, they often lack the ability to leverage that data in a meaningful way. As evidenced by the following figures1, their stakeholders lack confidence in their data, which compromises their ability to use it to gain business advantage:

• About half of all users say they lack confidence in their information
• Over half say they often miss information that might be of value because they don't know where to find it
• Managers spend over a quarter of their time looking for information -- and half the time, it doesn't even add value

With over 60% of CEOs saying they need to do a better job of capturing and understanding information to make more effective and timely business decisions, it's clear that there's a gap between capability and need. It's similarly fair to say that this shortfall is a leading reason why businesses aren't as competitive as they'd like to be - and why they’re at greater risk of failure during challenging times.