Managing information overload

Abstract

The degree to which companies are failing in their attempts to manage the increasing amount of information becoming available to them is discussed in light of a study, undertaken in 1999 by Autonomy Corporation and based on interviews with over 200 managing directors, managers and heads of Information technology (IT) departments in some of the UK’s leading companies across the financial, media and publishing, legal and retail sectors. Many of the companies that turned to technology for a solution to their problems found that the technology exacerbated the problems they already faced. The ways in which information has become a problem for so many organizations are considered, including: the corporate perspective; employee contributions to information overload; ways in which businesses make room in their organization for information overload; electronic mail that no-one wants to throw away; the high price both of searching for information and for not finding information. Concludes by outlining the grounds that exist for optimism for improvement in the future: notably through the use of advanced pattern matching technology.