Lack of an efficient mechanism for sharing knowledge, resulting in duplication of effort. For example, User A needs to create a document and does not know that User B created a similar document, which could have saved User A many hours of work.

Inability to find information, resulting in wasted time. Carrying the previous example one step further, even if User A knows that User B created a document similar to what User A needs to produce, User A spends an hour trying to find the document and then finally gives up and starts from scratch.

IT departments backlogged with requests for granting employees access to applications or information and/or application customization, resulting in the inefficient "manual" way of doing things. An example of this situation is the Payroll department that wants to make pay-stub information available online to employees, and thus has put in a request to IT to make this happen. Until it does, the Payroll department needs to take the time to respond to employee requests for this information.

Budgetary restraints, resulting in a lack of funding for hardware and software that could improve productivity. For example, an organization has recently purchased a new accounting system but has only purchased user licenses for accounting department personnel. Other departments, such as operations, could benefit from having access to the accounting data but must rely on putting in requests to the accounting department, or continue making decisions based on estimates rather than actual data.

Applications difficult to use, resulting in lack of information accessible to users. For example, an organization has implemented SAP, but it requires intensive training to know enough about the application to retrieve the desired information. Therefore, the organization is not taking advantage of the information provided by the application.