SPONSORED CONTENTWhitepaper|W H I T E PA P E R

Digital Friction Holds Back
Today’s Businesses
The proliferation of applications increases complexity, andthe resulting digital friction erodes operational efficiency.
Here’s how IT leaders can meet the challenge.
As organizations look to the future of work,

Digital friction is often caused by themany are reaching a tipping point whereproliferation of siloed applications,the efciencies created by digital businessinadequate content management, andare ofset by the inefciencies of digitalpoor application integration. It’s particularlyfriction — the difculty people have using

troublesome in a world of hybrid andtechnology to complete their daily tasks.

remote work in which employees,SP ONSORED BY

Whitepapersome of them using dozens of diferent

could be spent on higher-level tasks withapplications, need rapid, reliable access togreater business value.

trustworthy data.
What causes digital friction? Complex
The problem is pervasive: 95% ofprocesses and workfows (46%) lead theorganizations feel the pain, according

list, but there are other causes as well (seeto a new Foundry survey sponsored bychart below).

OpenText™. Too frequently employees
grapple with unwieldy interfaces,

n41% – Poor data quality

n38% –Manual tasks/lack of

inaccessible data, and cumbersome
operational processes.

automation
Productivity, far from always beingenhanced by digital technology, is,n34% – Limited access to timely
information

ironically, sometimes eroded by it. To
that point, survey respondents spend an
average of three hours per day searchingfor information to do their job — time that

n34% – Integration with existing
technology

Source: FoundryCIO|

OpenText|Digital Friction Holds Back Today’s Businesses

2The impacts of digital
friction

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Lower morale also has a ripple efecton organizations facing a job market inwhich employees with digital business

The business impacts caused by digitalskills are scarce. Organizations that arefriction are real and extensive, led bymore successful in overcoming digitaldecreased efciency (46%) and increased

friction can better attract and retain talent,costs (43%) — see chart below. As wasted

thereby overcoming the widely reported

time takes its toll on task completion,technology skills gap.

investments in highly paid knowledge
workers fail to deliver ROI.

Another business impact — increased
security risk (40%) — results from theNot surprisingly, morale and job

challenge of granting role-based accesssatisfaction (40%) also sufer whento data across multiple application silos.

employees face obstacles to doing their

Organizations can ill aford the risks ofwork. Poor employee experience, in turn,substandard security as they attempt tooften leads to more extensive businessmeet regulatory requirements for dataproblems. When frustrated employees

protection while warding of a burgeoning

interact with customers, the result is often

array of cyberattacks.

unsatisfactory customer experiences.

CIO|OpenText|Digital Friction Holds Back Today’s Businesses

3For midsize organizations, the implications

Although employee productivity
obstacles might be overcomeby having employees work extra
hours, unrealized business
opportunities, once missed, cannever be recovered.

are serious. The survey found thatorganizations with 1,000 to 4,999
employees are more vulnerable to theconsequences of digital friction thanlarger enterprises. Simply put, smaller
businesses have fewer automatedprocesses and less extensive fnancial
resources to invest in remediating digital

58% of the respondents havelost business opportunities
because they cannot accessdata in a timely manner.

friction.

A problem not wellunderstood
Although “decreased efciency” wasSignifcant opportunity loss

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Digital friction has serious competitive
consequences. More than four out offve (82%) of the survey respondents
reported that they have sufered delays
or missed deadlines due to technologyrelated challenges. Although employee
productivity obstacles might be overcomeby having employees work extra hours,
unrealized business opportunities,
once missed, can never be recovered.
According to the survey, 58% of the
respondents said they have lost business
opportunities because of an inability toaccess data in a timely manner.

cited as the top impact of digital friction,
its opposite, “increasing operationalefciency,” is, in a seeming paradox, theleast likely factor to be considered inpurchase decisions (16%). This might bebecause fewer solutions are aimed atincreasing operational efciency versus
more solutions being aimed at addressing
more urgent business challenges. At thesame time, IT and business decisionmakers might deploy a solution designed
to perform a specifc business task while
not recognizing the additional complexity
they’ve introduced, negatively impacting
efciences.
Given this conundrum, operational
experience hangs in the balance.
Operational experience focuses on
eliminating digital friction in the processes

CIO|OpenText|Digital Friction Holds Back Today’s Businesses

4Whitepaperthat fuel the business, addressing

deliver optimal results. Only 31% said theiroperational business needs acrosstools excel at enabling access to timely

Finance, Sales, Marketing, and other partsinformation. Similarly, only 27% said thatof the organization. Survey respondents

their technology tools excel at embedding

recognize that improved operational

information into business processes soexperience is tied to both employee

they can avoid the time-consuming efort

experience and customer experience.

of moving back and forth between
multiple applications.

Indeed, the top goal of decision-makers is
improving employee productivity (30%),

To remedy both shortfalls, organizations

followed closely by reducing cost (28%).

need solutions that help embed

And 26% cited improving customer service

information in critical business processes.

as the top goal. However, the growth ofDoing so gives employees access to theapplications intended to achieve theseinformation they need, while streamlining

goals, with poor integration between

workfows. A composable platform thatthem, erodes operational experience andconnects people, content, and processes

contributes to ongoing digital friction.

is able to meet this need and improve
employee efciency while enablingsmarter, faster decision-making.

Reducing friction to worksmarter
Notwithstanding the ambivalence
previously cited regarding purchases that
increase operational efciency, IT andbusiness decision-makers would prefer
technology tools that:

Current tools falling short

n 42% –Are easy to use

Measured against two key yardsticks ofn 42% –Enable rapid discovery ofdigital friction, the current technology

information

tools used by survey respondents fail toCIO|OpenText|

Digital Friction Holds Back Today’s Businesses5n 40% –Automate manual processes

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bringing in new technology can betime-consuming and labor-intensive.

IT and technology decision-makers are
more likely than their non-IT peers ton29% – Enable users to collaborate

point to the reduction of manual work as

across lines of business. Accessan important technology capability: 48%

to a common data set streamlines

said it’s one of the top three capabilities

collaboration as team members sharethey would like to see (versus 32% ofconsistent information; its absence

the respondents with non-IT titles). This

causes digital friction.

fnding shows that those most closely
acquainted with technology see manual

n27% – Reduce data duplication.

work reduction as both a challenge andClean data is essential for efcientan opportunity.

business operations as well as
employee productivity.

Respondents want technology to deliveron the following:

Although the respondents were not asked
specifcally about generative artifcialnn

33% – Empower users to takeintelligence (GenAI) technology, it canswift action to help a customer or

enable many of these capabilities. Byclient. With customer experience atsummarizing documents on command,or near the top of many organizations’for example, GenAI relieves workers ofbusiness priorities, removing digital

the labor-intensive work of tracking down

friction from interactions pays

information in various documents and thensignifcant dividends.

creating timely reports.

32% – Reduce the need for multiple

From digital friction to
future-proof technology

applications. Requiring employees
to continually switch between
applications is a principal cause ofDespite the transformational power ofdigital friction.

digital business, digital friction is still verymuch a dark cloud hanging over the futurenCIO|

OpenText|

31% –Integrate technology withoutof work, afecting nearly all of the surveyed

forcing process changes. Havingorganizations. Because the complexity

to alter business operations whenof technology-enabled work continues toDigital Friction Holds Back Today’s Businesses

6increase, digital friction is not likely to abate
Whitepaper

data sets.

on its own and is likely to increase over time
if not reduced.

By embedding content into core businessprocesses, automating data access, andGaining control over complexity, mitigating

streamlining workfows, organizations

digital friction, and improving operational

can help employees fnd knowledge

experience will require more efective

quickly and easily to reduce daily friction.

technology tools than many survey

OpenText also delivers the power of cloud-respondents currently employ. OpenText™

based GenAI to reduce digital frictiondelivers a composable, scalable platformby summarizing documents or enablingthat eases digital friction and promotes

workers to use AI chat to fnd documents.

operational efciency. Deep, seamless out-

And in a world where cyberdefense isof-the-box integration with foundationalalways a top priority, OpenText tightens

applications, including enterprise resource

security with policy-driven, role-basedplanning, fnancial, and human resources,access.

delivers information when and where it’sneeded. This ensures that workers using

With OpenText™ Content Cloud, IT anddiferent applications can access thebusiness leaders can deploy new digitalsame reliable data — the underpinnings ofbusiness applications without increasing

efcient employee productivity.

complexity and exacerbating the digital
friction that inevitably results. By future-Reimagine knowledge to driveproductivity

Providing a single source of truth as well as
actionable insights eliminates the wasted
time and efort of switching between
diferent applications with inconsistent© 2024 IDG Communications, Inc.

proofng their investments, they can ride
the wave of technology innovation to gain acompetitive edge.

For more information, see:https://www.opentext.com/products/content-cloud.

Sponsor and the sponsor logo are trademarks of Sponsor Corp.,
registered across jurisdictions worldwide.

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