ROCHESTER, N.Y.--May 9, 2005-- A new study released today by Xerox Corporation and industry research firm IDC found that more than half of the financial services companies surveyed are relying on document-management strategies to combat their mounting document work and to increase productivity and profits at the same time. According to the study, knowledge workers in financial firms spend up to 40 percent of their time dealing directly with a wide variety of documents such as mortgage loans, credit reports and transactional reports. However, these workers spend half of this time searching for information, and 30 percent of the time they cannot find what they're looking for. "The amount of time financial services professionals spend working with documents directly impacts their ability to serve customers and generate additional revenue," said Tom Dolan, president, Xerox Global Services. "That's why a majority of the companies surveyed view smarter document management as a way to buttress their bottom line." In fact, two-thirds of the companies surveyed said that effective document-management strategies have had a positive impact on their productivity, and more than half said smarter document management is contributing to increased profitability and better customer service. In addition, for those that rated their document-management processes as highly effective, their employees spend far less of their workday processing documents and less time searching for information within documents compared to the average of other industries, such as healthcare and manufacturing. "The large number of knowledge workers from different departments, coupled with the significant volume of records, often results in fragmented ownership of documents as they make their way through an organization," said Angele Boyd, vice president, IDC. "Financial firms with effective information-management strategies have been able to strike a secure and productive balance in the way documents are managed throughout their lifecycles." Compounding the security issue, Boyd added, are government regulations such as the USA Patriot Act and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, both of which have made it vital to manage secure information within the enterprise. For the complete survey, visit www.xerox.com/globalservices, click on White Papers, and look under Related Resources.