Report: Data silos cause employees to spend 12 hours a week searching for data

Air tables new research commissioned by Forrester Consulting reveals that large organizations’ business processes are more distributed than they think, leading to poor decision-making, more mistakes, and weaker team morale and lower revenues.

In our increasingly digital world, the proliferation of business software apps and tools leaves employees overwhelmed. According to Airtable and Forrester’s Crisis of a Fractured Organization study, large organizations today use an average of 367 software apps and systems to manage their various workflows. These various tools create data silos that obscure critical data, boost multiple sources of truth, and make it harder for teams to find the information they need.

With all the moving workflows, teams feel out of sync with each other. A majority (79%) of knowledge workers reported that teams across their organization are isolated, and 68% said their work is negatively impacted because they lack visibility into cross-functional projects.

Critical insights hidden

Teams make poor or slow decisions based on the limited information available to them, unaware of critical insights hiding in various tools. Nearly half of respondents (46%) said poor business processes make decisions take longer and increase the risk of making the wrong decisions. These breakups hurt sales and leave employees frustrated and disengaged.

The research showed that the fault lines within organizations have a negative impact on the work of employees. Knowledge workers reported spending nearly 29% of their week (11.6 hours) searching for the most important information they need to do their job. This struggle to find the right information is the #1 reason why employees say they don’t feel engaged.

However, organizations understand the critical need for a forward-looking strategy and are promoting more connectivity between data and teams. The majority (93%) of respondents said increasing process efficiency in their organization is a high priority; similarly, 90% cited improved collaboration as a top priority. By implementing connected tools to improve cross-functional collaboration and organizational alignment, respondents expect to save nearly 12 hours per week and spend that time on their core tasks.

Airtable’s survey commissioned by Forrester surveyed 1,022 individual contributors and decision makers up to the C-suite in the US and UK. The study started in August 2022 and was completed in September.

Read the full report by Airtable and Forrester.