Culture of ‘buck-passing’ costing UK businesses millions

New survey shows 99% of businesses lose costly time and resources due to staff avoiding responsibility for IT issues

[ClickPress, Mon Feb 05 2007] Network General™ Corporation, the leading provider of IT Service Assurance Solutions, today announced a survey revealing the true cost of the ‘buck-passing’ culture among UK businesses. Virtually all (99%) of businesses surveyed claimed to have suffered delays due to staff failing to take responsibility for the resolution of IT issues. 31% admitting to losing more than three days a month, at a cost potentially running in to millions of pounds in larger organisations.

The main barrier to resolving IT problems, was the lack of communication between internal teams (34%), with a dearth of available information and lack of any clear lines of responsibility running a close second and third. The survey also showed that, in 88% of cases, early indicators of impending system failures were being overlooked, a likely contributing factor in lost man-hours.

“Increasingly complex IT environments are breeding a culture of ‘finger pointing’ amongst employees.” Explains Faouzi Lajri, regional director of southern Europe. “Meanwhile, managers often find themselves without the tools to gain a high level view of processes necessary to assign responsibility to individuals or teams. In other words they are unable to get to the source of the ‘Network Truth’, which our Network Assurance Solutions are designed to reveal by removing the complexity of managing the business and harnessing the power in the network.”

Of those companies surveyed, the problem seemed particularly acute in the financial services sector with 38% admitting that buck-passing “often” causes delays and 14% claiming to have lost more than seven days each month as a result.

To put this in perspective, the most efficient sector appears to be manufacturing, where less than half that amount (13%) “often” experience delays or lose more than seven days a month (6%) as a result of buck-passing.

Compared with other European countries, however, it appears that British businesses have the situation relatively under control. For example, in Germany the number of man-hours lost is considerably greater, with more than 50% of businesses surveyed claiming to lose more than three days a month due to buck-passing, while in France the figure is 49%.

Ends

Notes to editors

The survey was conducted on behalf of Network General by Vanson Bourne and is based on the responses from 300 IT managers across the UK, France and Germany.

The full survey results are available on request

About Network General Corporation

Network General™ is a leading provider of IT management solutions designed to integrate and simplify IT management and troubleshooting across IT domains, assuring the delivery of IT services. The Network General portfolio consists of innovative software solutions and intelligent appliances that monitor and manage all elements of the IT infrastructure including network devices, applications, and servers, while simultaneously delivering a correlated view of the health of the business service. Network General’s solutions provide IT professionals with an end-to-end correlated view of the performance and availability of critical business services and the underlying network infrastructure. For more information on Network General, a privately-held company based in San Jose, California, call +44 (0) 1628 50 90 26 or go to www.networkgeneral.com.

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