Hate the software you have to use at work? You are not alone

Are you frustrated with clunky workplace systems? Do you wish that you could work with a more modern streamlined solution?

You're in good company, a new study by app platform specialist Sapho in conjunction with research firm Forrester reveals that 91 percent of employees agree simplified enterprise apps would increase their efficiency and productivity. In addition 75 percent of employees say they have a hard time accessing information in their enterprise systems and applications.

Other concerns surround the number of systems in use. In just two years the number of applications that employees use has grown by 25 pecent. To make matters worse, 65 percent of employees say they ignore data for making decisions when they must pull it from multiple systems and 62 percent say they delay completing tasks that require logging into multiple systems.

So how can employers solve the problem? 74 percent of employees say that they'd prefer to access a subset of personalized data rather than a comprehensive data set. Furthermore, 30 percent of employees want personalized notifications of tasks that need to be completed and another 28 percent believe a personalized feed of individual actions and updates would improve how they leverage, access and take action on information.

People also want mobile-first work experiences, but aren't getting them. The study shows that 55 percent of organizations have implemented three mobile apps or fewer -- typically email and calendar -- despite the fact that 69 percent of employees seek an engaging mobile-first work experience.

The IT department seems to be a bit of a bottleneck in all of this. More than half of IT leaders say they will only upgrade their systems to simplify how employees access, leverage, and take action on information if it doesn't impact their existing systems.

"In my own experiences at CBS and in speaking with my fellow executives, we are all shocked by how little our employees actually use the systems we have invested billions of dollars into," says Fouad ElNaggar, co-founder and CEO of Sapho. "Enterprise software usability is so clunky and its usefulness so siloed that it has become impossible to use, so maybe we should not be surprised that our employees barely use it. These findings paint a bleak picture and confirm the importance of our mission at Sapho: to deliver the future of work today by helping enterprises offer personalized work feeds and simple, single purpose micro apps to their employees that don't have the time -- or patience -- to submit to the work software status quo".

You can find out more about the findings in the full report which is available from the Sapho website.

Image credit: Ronald Sumners/Shutterstock