The average worker is losing 7.4 hours every week looking for the information they need to get their job done. That’s almost a full work day. The reasons are clear. According to IDC research, data is growing by 40% year-on-year, which is a phenomenal amount, but even more significant is that 80% of that data is unstructured. It sits in e-mails, presentations and other text and multimedia content and people can’t get to the data they need to do their jobs. Furthermore, security is also an ongoing concern, as around 85% of businesses are struggling to secure their documents.

“Information collaboration is the only way for organisations to improve productivity and efficiencies when it comes to information management and making both document and non-document-related content available to the people who need it, when they need it,” says Dawie Malan, head of software sales at Ricoh. “The volume and detail of information is exploding, and managing big data is fast becoming a competitive differentiator. Big data is everyone’s concern, and its growth is being driven by the rise of multimedia, social media and the Internet of Things.”