The Data

Research-backed insights on productivity loss

Knowledge workers lose hours every day to manual tasks. Here's what the research says.

The Problem

Knowledge workers lose hours every day to manual tasks

Skills Gap

26 days

Lost per employee every year due to inadequate data skills. Across 12,000+ employees surveyed, workers spend 4.34 hours/week being unproductive because they lack the skills to efficiently handle data-related tasks.

Multiverse Skills Intelligence Report, 2024
Data Movement

76%

Of knowledge workers spend 1–3 hours every day just moving data from one place to another. Copy-pasting between spreadsheets, transcribing from PDFs, reformatting for different systems—repetitive work that adds up to weeks per year.

Zapier, 2021
Spreadsheets

10 hours

Per week spent on manual spreadsheet work by finance professionals. In a survey of 200 CFOs, this translates to skilled finance talent buried in data entry, consolidation, and formatting instead of strategic analysis.

DataRails (200 CFOs), 2022
Information Search

47%

Of digital workers struggle to find the information or data they need to do their jobs effectively. App sprawl and siloed data mean employees waste time hunting across systems instead of executing.

Gartner Digital Worker Survey, 2023
Search & Gather

8.8 hours

Per week—nearly 20% of working hours—spent by knowledge workers searching for and gathering information needed to complete tasks. That's over 400 hours per year per employee lost to finding files and data.

McKinsey Global Institute, 2012
Excel Proficiency

Only 18%

Of CFOs consider themselves Excel experts, despite spreadsheets being central to financial operations. The remaining 82% rely on workarounds, manual processes, and time-consuming trial-and-error to get work done.

DataRails, 2022
Document Processing

92%

Of employees admit they waste up to 8 hours per week searching documents for information. Extracting tables from PDFs, reconciling data across formats—friction at every step.

ABBYY/Sapio (5,025 workers), 2021
Finance Operations

41%

Of FP&A processes are still manual. Despite advances in technology, nearly half of financial planning and analysis workflows rely on spreadsheet manipulation, manual data pulls, and copy-paste consolidation.

DataRails (200 CFOs), 2022

Hours Lost Per Week

Across different productivity drains

Cumulative Time Savings

How small weekly savings compound over time (per user)

Research Timeline

Key findings from 2012 to 2024

~8.8 hours/week spent searching for info

92% waste up to 8 hours/week searching documents for info

2021APQC

2.8 hours/week looking for info; only 30/40 hours productive

2021Zapier

76% spend 1-3 hours/day moving data between apps

10 hours/week manual spreadsheet work; only 18% Excel experts

47% struggle to find needed info/data

4.34 hours/week unproductive due to data skills gaps