A recent SAS/Leger Marketing survey has found that 47% of Canadian executives say the amount of information they have overwhelms them, and that  public sector executives are 20% more likely to suffer from information overload than private.

At the same time, 96% of the executives surveyed said it is important to have access to information to make better informed business decisions.

This sense of overload may in part be due to how executives perceive the information they receive. When asked whether the information they have about their department or business performance is useful, almost a third (31%) said the information is sometimes, rarely or never useful. On the other hand, only 23% said it is always useful.

They also had issues with data accuracy, timeliness and how easy it is to understand. Twenty-nine per cent said the information is sometimes, rarely or never easy to understand, 27% said the same about its accuracy and almost half (44%) had the same issue with its timeliness.

“In the information age, business leaders need their information to be easy to understand, accurate, and timely. Put these three together and it becomes useful,” said Jean-François Ouellet, associate professor, Department of Marketing at University of Montreal’s HEC Montreal business school. “If any of these three pillars fails, the system fails. If you can’t understand the information it really doesn’t matter how accurate or timely it is. In the end, it won’t have much business value.”

Public sector feeling overwhelmed

Overall public sector executives were 20% more likely to be overwhelmed by information than private (53% versus 43%). Part of this may be due to the fact they were more likely to say that organizational politics was a barrier to improving the use of data for competitive advantage (35% versus 26%), that they believe their organization does not spend enough on business analytics technology (53% versus 45%) and that risk management was twice as likely to be a top business issue (8% versus 4%).

“Information overload generally isn’t caused by one single issue, rather a combination of things,” Ouellet said. “If information is not easy to understand nor overly accurate and it’s being used to manage risk, which is a highly complex problem to solve, the combination can lead to overload.”

Getting an edge on the competition

The survey also revealed how organizations obtain competitive advantage.

·         Quality of products and services: 63%

·         Customer focus: 55%

·         Skilled workforce: 50%

·         Strong management team: 41%

·         Products and services innovation: 35%

·         Information technology: 30%

·         Low cost: 18%

In addition:

·        53% say data is the most under-utilized asset in their organization

·         81% said their staff could do a better job of sharing information

·         76% said they’d personally make better informed business decisions if they had the right tools in place to analyze information more effectively

·         While 77% said their company could operate more smartly if it used business analytics software, only 60% said their company currently uses business analytics software

·         Less than half (44%) said their company was spending enough on business analytics technology

The departments that rely most on business analytics are:

o        Finance: 25%

o        Operations and manufacturing: 14%

o        Sales: 13%

o        Marketing/advertising/PR: 12%

o        Corporate management: 12%

o        Customer service: 10%

o        HR: 4%

o        Risk and Compliance: 3%

About the Survey

The online survey was conducted for SAS Canada by Leger Marketing, the largest independent Market Research Company in Canada, between March 3rd and March 26th, 2010, with a representative sample of 1,022 senior-level business decision makers. This method simulates a probability sample which would yield a maximum margin of error of +/-3.1%, 19 times out of 20.