A trendy adage. . . perhaps. But when it comes to a disorganized computer desktop or a messy electronic file management system; the fact is, for most of us that sit behind a computer screen for any portion of our work day – the struggle is, indeed, real.
We’ve all been there. . . you need a file – stat. It’s got the graph in it that your boss needed – yesterday – for a project.
Did I save it as a PDF? Maybe it’s still in my email. But wait – I wouldn’t have kept it in my email. My handy dandy “keep-it-all-in-my-inbox-for-months-before-finally-dragging-it-to-a-random-folder” system got me in trouble last time – so now I save everything on my computer. Or the shared drive. Hmmmmm – I’ll do a search!! Up pops the standard issued search pane . . . frantic typing ensues, followed by the never ending, “search in progress” message. Laughing at me, mocking me, reminding me that I made a resolution at the first of the year that I’d do better, keep my files more organized. Yet it’s only February and here I sit – fingers crossed, once again lost and confused, diving deeper in the abyss of, “I Know I Pressed Save.”
Okay – admittedly that might be a bit melodramatic. While the scenarios can differ vastly, what remains the same is that countless hours are wasted every day searching for various electronic files, folders, and data by professionals across all industries. In fact, the average employee currently stores their data and documents in 6 -12 places including:
- company shared drives
- corporate or personal cloud (Box, Dropbox, OneDrive)
- desktop or temporary locations
- instant messaging
And this data and documentation being created and searched for comes in all types of formats; PDFs, TIFFs, JPGs, Word docs, Excel spreadsheets and more.
In other words – this document search thing – the multiple file types, multiple data homes, and multiple hours spent searching, it’s essentially busy professionals being forced to do “busy work” instead of their real jobs. Recent statistics point to an average of $1.7 trillion lost per year due to data loss. Yes, that’s TRILLION.
According to IDC, an average company with 1,000 employees – each employee is now spending 15% to 30% of their work time ‘searching for nonexistent information, failing to find existing information, or recreating information that can’t be found.’ If you’re reading this, you’ve probably been there. So has your boss, and their boss. Perhaps business vernacular should change “ROI” from Return on Investment to Return on Information.
In examining the big picture of enterprise electronic data management, two other important factors come into play.
Big data is getting bigger. The amount of data the average employee or organization creates and saves each day, each year continues to rise. From 2003 to 2010, we created 5 exabytes of data every two days (an Exabyte is one billion gigabytes.) In 2010 we were creating that same volume of data every 10 minutes.
In 2010 alone, we created 912 exabytes of data, which is 18 times larger than all of the books ever written. Just sit on that for a moment.
The retiring “Boomer” workforce impacts electronic data management more than most realize. Many Boomers are not as tech savvy as their Gen X and Millennial colleagues, meaning a good portion of their knowledge is stored in their mind and not on their desktop. Reports point to 4 million Boomers retiring each year; with countless years of experience and knowledge often walking out the door with them. So when their replacement is hired, they get to endlessly search for their files and data or in many cases, attempt to recreate it.
The obvious conclusion? There has to be a better way.
Dramatic analogies & scary statistics aside, that graph I needed is there – and it turns out I can find it. Fast. Real fast. No Delorean required.
It’s called Access FileSight. A solution designed around “document retrieval.” And it’s slick. Trying to conduct a search, but the only keywords you can recall are inside of a PDF? No problem. Optical character recognition (OCR) takes care of that. The file might still be sitting as an attachment in your email inbox? It searches there too. You can drop FileSight in anywhere and it’ll find data everywhere. Users can even misspell the file name when saving or searching. And you can conduct a search from any device –including PCs, iPads and smartphones. While the benefits and features of FileSight are long and truly amazing, the best synopsis is that FINALLY, we have an answer to the never ending file search nightmare. FileSight delivers a true turnkey solution that increases productivity and delivers instant results. . . also known as your new best friend.
To find out more about FileSight, check out www.accessfilesight.com.
