New Research Reveals The Crisis of Fractured Organizations

Superscript example¹ / Subscript example₂ Today Airtable released independent research conducted by Forrester Consulting showing that large organizations' business processes are more fractured than they think, leading to poor decision-making, more errors, and weaker team morale and revenue. The findings are from the Forrester Consulting survey commissioned by Airtable: “The Crisis of Fractured Organizations: How Teams Can Address Organizational Misalignment & Achieve More In The Modern Work Environment.” 

Key Findings Include:

• Large organizations (20K+ employees) use 367 software apps and systems, on average.

• 30% of respondents’ weeks are spent trying to find the right data and information – sapping 2.4 hours daily.

• 80% of respondents view reducing data and information silos as a critical or high priority.

• The #1 reason that employees disengage is that it’s too hard to find the information they need to do their job.

• Respondents reported they would save 29% of their week (11.6 hrs) by implementing low-code tools to build their own apps, on average.

The Crisis of Fractured Organizations

Data silos, manual workflows, and tools like email and spreadsheets are hamstringing organizations as they hide critical data, encourage multiple sources of truth, and make it harder than ever to get work done. Widespread software adoption at the team level has led to hundreds of different apps and systems across the organization, locking information in disparate tools that don’t speak to each other and creating silos and blindspots that make it impossible for teams to find the information they need. Decision makers don’t have the full picture and lack the visibility to understand what’s happening across the organization. 

• A majority (72%) of respondents from large teams (500+ employees) said their organizations “frequently or always” use paper-based manual workflows to manage or automate business processes. 

• Another 83% of decision makers said they “frequently or always” use electronic manual workflows such as excel spreadsheets and email. 

• Four in five respondents (79%) said teams throughout their organizations are siloed.

• 68% of respondents from large teams (500+ employees) said their work is negatively impacted because they don’t have visibility into cross-functional projects.

Fractured Organizations Struggle To Compete

Organizations that struggle to work together across teams face weaker productivity, business impact, and employee morale. Teams are making poor or slow decisions based on the limited information in front of them, unaware of critical insights hiding in different tools. These fractures hurt revenue and lead people to feel frustrated and disengaged.

• Nearly half of respondents (46%) said poor business processes result in decisions taking longer and a higher risk of making the wrong decisions.

• Disconnected and inefficient processes result in a 24% drop in productivity across the organization according to business decision makers, growing to 31% decision makers for large teams.

• Nearly a third of respondents (31%) indicated they saw decreased revenue as a direct result of organization silos, inaccurate data, and broken work processes. 

• Three in five respondents said employee sentiment suffers from inefficient or disconnected processes. This figure grows to 69% for large teams.

Organizations Are Ready To Prioritize Alignment

Organizations understand the critical need for a future fit strategy to foster greater connectivity across data and teams. 

• 93% of respondents said increasing process efficiency in their organization is a high or critical priority. Similarly, 90% noted improved collaboration as a top priority. 

• 84% of decision makers expect solutions that improve business processes to provide significant transformation benefits by making data and insights easier to find.

• Respondents expect to save 12 hours each week from implementing tools to increase cross-functional collaboration and organizational alignment.

Connected Apps Empower Teams To Achieve More Together

To overcome organizational silos and improve discovery and connections, teams can build their own connected apps on top of shared data. In fact, respondents expect low-code app building tools to offer the greatest transformational increases in productivity. Connected apps, defined as a network of apps that share a common data source and live on the same platform, improve productivity, reduce friction, boost engagement, and align teams across the organization so they can achieve operational excellence and ambitious business outcomes. 

Airtable recently introduced the Airtable Connected Apps Platform, a suite of new features and updated capabilities that allow teams to create apps on top of shared, real-time data. Enterprise teams from the world’s largest organizations are using Airtable to build connected apps to power their most critical workflows - from managing product launches to launching complex global marketing campaigns - all on a single platform.

Methodology

Forrester conducted an online survey of more than 1000 individual contributors and decision makers including the C-suite at organizations in the US and UK to evaluate how teams are working today and the impact of fractured systems and organizational silos. Respondents were offered a small incentive as a thank you for time spent on the survey. 

About Airtable

Airtable enables any team, regardless of technical skill, to create apps on top of shared data and power their most critical and unique workflows. Teams at more than 300,000 organizations, including 80% of the Fortune 100, rely on the Airtable Connected Apps Platform to stay aligned, execute with greater agility, and connect previously siloed teams and data.