Data Recycling Abilities Are Set to Become a Key Differentiator for Business Competitiveness

Businesses have a data hoarding problem. After decades of headlines suggesting data is the new gold, organizations have accumulated more data than they know what to do with. IDC research suggests that companies are increasingly struggling to make sense of their complex data pools. In the data gold-rush organizations have surrounded themselves not with treasure, but trash. It’s time to start being honest about data: most of it is garbage. But that doesn’t mean it’s worthless. And when you think about it, that’s not a contradiction. You just have to consider how we treat trash today. In the United States alone, 69 million tons of items are recycled each year. The alternative is unthinkable and irresponsible: accumulating rubbish or sending useful items to the landfill. Yet while this mindset is obvious when it comes to physical waste, most organizations haven’t yet adapted this approach to digital clutter. Instead, teams are left to wade through the digital trash-heap, slowing down their work and making the search for useful knowledge and information frustrating.