The Hidden Costs of Information Work

White Paper

WHITE PAPERThe Hidden Costs of Information Work

Sponsored by: Content Technologies Multiclient StudySusan Feldman Joshua DuhlJulie Rahal Marobella Alison CrawfordMarch 2005

INFORMATION TASKS ARE CENTRAL TOTODAY'S ORGANIZATION

When productivity rates leap, so do enterprise profits.

In the past century, we haveautomated blue-collar work, wringing more products out of every worker hour.

Withthe economy now becoming information-based rather than industrial, the next frontier is to make information work more productive. It is no wonder, then, that organizationsare trying to analyze business processes in order to streamline them; eliminateduplication; and automate the predictable, repeatable steps that any such processincludes.

Automating repetitive steps and eliminating those that waste time willincrease information worker productivity and save an organization millions of dollars.

But information work — white-collar work — is difficult to analyze.

The product of knowledge work is ideas, documents, data.

How do we quantify both the number andquality of ideas that are produced?

HOW DO YOU QUANTIFY INFORMATIONWORK?

This Content Technologies multiclient study set out to answer precisely this question.

During the summer of 2004, IDC surveyed 600 U.S. companies in three sizecategories and in four vertical industries — financial services, government,manufacturing, and healthcare.

We asked them how long they spent at variouscontent-related tasks and what repetitive tasks they performed that were primetargets for automation or improvement, such as rekeying data or reformattingdocuments. We also asked them what authoring software, content management, or retrieval applications they had either developed or purchased and what contentprovider services they had subscribed to; how they were using them; and what theprocess was for deciding what to buy or build and how to implement it.

We found outwhat their collaboration patterns were, both inside and outside the organization.

Thenwe interviewed customers to fill in the cracks in the data with qualitative information.

The goal was to determine how content-related tasks were performed and what theprevailing attitudes were to investing in and using content management and retrievalapplications.

What were the advantages?

What were the barriers to use andto investment?

WHAT WE FOUND

We took the data that we had gathered on average number of hours spent on eachtask and, based on an average information worker salary of $60,000 per year,

calculated how much the annual cost would be per worker to an organization.

Table 1and Figure 1 show the average number of hours spent on the major information-related tasks that use technologies such as authoring software and contentmanagement and retrieval software.

Table 1 also shows costs to an organization for one information worker earning $60,000 per year, including benefits, or a salary of $45,000 per year plus an additional 30% in benefits paid.

The numbers are based onthe Bureau of Labor Statistics annual salary figures published in

Crain's ChicagoBusiness

in June 2004.

They don't include additional overhead or equipment. Notethat all workers do not perform all tasks.

TABLE 1

The Cost of Information Tasks to the Enterprise

TaskAverage Hoursper Worker per WeekCost per Worker per Week* ($)Cost per Worker per Year* ($)Email: read and answer 14.5 418.3 21,752.9Create documents 13.3 333.7 19,952.7Analyze information 9.6 277.0 14,401.9Search 9.5 274.1 14,251.9Edit/review 8.8 253.9 13,201.8Gather information for documents 8.3 240.0 12,481.7File and organize documents 6.8 196.2 10,201.4Create presentations 6.7 193.3 10,051.3Create images 5.6 162.7 8,461.1Data entry to eforms 5.6 162.4 8,446.1Manage document approval 4.3 124.1 6,450.9Publish to Web 4.2 121.2 6,300.8Manage document routing 4.0 115.4 6,000.8Publish to other channels 3.9 112.5 5,850.8Create rich media 2.8 80.8 4,200.6Translate 1.0 29.7 1,545.2n = 234Note: *Based on average salary of $60,000 per year plus benefits ($28.85 per hour in a 40-hour week)