Over 44% of companies do not have an information management strategy

London, 7th September 2005 - According to a survey of Information Management and IT Professionals, conducted by Documation-UK and supported by Vignette, over 44% of respondents revealed that their company still does not have a document and information management strategy and over a fifth of the Information Management and IT Professionals surveyed indicated that more than 60% of their company's information was still held only as hard paper copies. These figures show that there is still much to be done in terms of streamlining operations for information management as well as a deep lack of understanding of the benefits of electronically managing information.

"These figures show that although IT professionals are generally aware of the importance of effective and efficient information management there is still a great need to raise awareness of the legal requirements of managing information." said Tamar Beck, Group Exhibition Director for Documation UK.

According to respondents the top four information management issues of concern to organisations in order of priority are:

* Retrieving documents quickly
* Collaboration between departments on joint documents
* Consolidating information management
* Security of information

The professionals most prevalent views on how these issues could be solved were:

* Senior management leading by example
* More money and greater budget
* Education of board members and senior managers

94% percent of Information Management and IT Professionals indicated that information management was either 'very important' or 'important' to their organisation, however only 42% indicated that they were aware of any regulations or legislation which would affect them or their job directly with regards to business information management. When you consider that the top three categories of information chosen by those surveyed, both in actual quantity and importance to the organisations productivity were; records and email, customer details, and invoices, it is alarming that such a high proportion were unaware of the legal requirements and current legislation on information management.

Bijan Bedroud, Regional Vice President for North EMEA, Vignette commented, "The survey highlights that many organisations need to put an information management strategy in place and fully understand the regulations and legislations they must meet. Moving to an electronic information management system allows businesses to store, secure and account for data, whilst still providing easy access and sharing facilities for the relevant personnel. Such measures enable organisations to meet immediate compliance targets, as well as offering long-term business benefits such as improved customer response times, increased employee effectiveness and greater operational efficiency."

The three most important business benefits driving investment in document and information management according to the survey results are; increased productivity, improved customer experience/service and better employee effectiveness. This is verified by the fact that 55 % of respondents said that over 60% of their information was held electronically.

Tamar Beck, Group Exhibition Director for Documation UK continued "As the results of this survey clearly show, companies and organisations without an information management strategy are not in a position to take advantage of the huge benefits of efficacious electronic information management."

The survey questionnaire was responded to by 119 Information Management and IT Professionals.