Dive Brief:
- Application overload is an ongoing enterprise problem, with the average large business using 367 software apps and systems to get work done, according to a Forrester Consulting study commissioned by Airtable.
- Workers are spending nearly one-third of their work week, or 2.4 hours a day, to find the data and information required to do their jobs effectively. Forrester surveyed more than 1,000 workers in September for this study.
- The waste in employee resources and attention span clashes with the current economic backdrop, in which leaders are looking to concentrate their technology spending and make their organizations run as efficiently as possible.
Dive Insight:
Workers have often flagged app-switching as a drag on productivity. But app bloat has organizational consequences beyond employee experience.
Companies with disconnected, inefficient work methods face a 24% drop in productivity, according to the Forrester study. Ultimately, the disconnect also impacts revenue, employee engagement, and the ability to innovate.
The app bloat diagnostic comes at a time when enterprise technology buyers have shown no sign of any major cuts in IT spending for 2023, but there is interest in right-sizing and consolidating key vendors.
Some providers, such as Salesforce, reported an increase in customer scrutiny over software spend, leading to longer sales cycles and deferred decisions into 2023.
In the collaboration market, customers are looking at their options for service consolidation. Vendors have responded to this trend with the release of new features and product lines, many of them aimed at providing a central, digital location where work takes place.
