The UK economy is wasting the equivalent of £6.2 billion* in time searching for information residing in corporate IT systems, according to research conducted by Simplexo.

March 2009

Over 24% of respondents stated that it took them over a day to search for information while 19% claimed it took them between two and three days. More than one third could not find all the information they requested from information management systems such as CRM, email and accounting programs.

54% of respondents stated that they have to conduct detailed searches several times a day, while a further 39% claimed they had to more than ten times a week.

Key findings included:

• 43% of UK office workers take between one and three days to find information; 39% stated it took an hour
• Over a third - 34% - could not find the information they needed on corporate IT systems
• Only 36% claimed to be able to find information in time for an inspection, whilst 28% said it would take over 2 days and 23% felt it was impossible to tell if they could do it
• 69% of organisations claimed to need remote access for workers, yet critical to this is the need to have secure search functionality
• 26% of the sample still has to ask IT to help in search, while 40% could only undertake one search at a time

 Alistair Handyside, CEO, Simplexo, stated: "The cost of working with inadequate information and inefficient search capabilities is one of the most pressing threats to any competitive business.  But the solution doesn't have to involve a long consultancy engagement and a huge price tag.  Simplexo was designed for simplicity - rapid installation and deployment, immediate productivity gains, and fast ROI.  We don't include a complex BI system; we just help you to stop wasting your time looking for information so you can start using it instead.  Simplexo is just clean search."

Simplexo Enterprise is the only search solution on the market which leverages native access to the existing indexing abilities of databases and other legacy software and which indexes only unstructured data.  Unlike traditional search platforms, Simplexo Enterprise simultaneously and securely searches huge and diverse data repositories across the enterprise, retrieving and de-duplicating accurate, up-to-date information in real time. 

Simplexo Enterprise summary

• Saves time: eliminates individual searches on multiple data sources
• Improves accuracy: returns live, up-to-date information in real time
• Maintains security: designed to MoD security levels (AES 256)
• Very simple to use: single-click searching
• Platform agnostic for ease of deployment

About Simplexo Ltd

Simplexo Ltd is focused on delivering a new experience in enterprise search and is founded on a solid history in Electronic Document Management and Retrieval. In recent highlights, the organisation's technology was used to run the UK government's local election pilots for almost 700,000 concurrent users, and also supplied one of the first applications to BSkyB for secure online voting. Today, Simplexo technology is delivering value to organisations in many industry sectors, including finance, healthcare and local government.

* Figures are based on the Office for National Statistics Labour Market Statistics February 2009

Total number of office workers in the UK = 25 million

Average hourly rate of pay = £12.39

Average daily rate of pay = £86.73

24% of UK office workforce is 6 million which equates to £5.2 billion in lost time (the figure relating to employees looking for information in one day)

19% of UK office workforce is 4.75 million which equates to £1.02 billion (the figure relating to workers who spend between 2 and 3 days searching for information)