• Annual expenditure of 2 to 20% of net sales (depending on industry)
• Analytical instrumentation and methods are producing greater quantities of data
• R&D organizations are more global, resulting in a more diverse R&D environment with cultural, language, coordination, and collaboration challenges
• Most research documentation is based on manual entries in laboratory notebooks and a highly manual intellectual property (IP) management process

Poor R&D knowledge management causes less effective research investments (e.g., redundant experimentation; excessive time spent on searching for relevant information; excessive data entry and record keeping; difficulty in sharing research outputs); higher direct costs; lost or wasted IP; and an impaired ability to protect IP rights.