Be honest, can you trust that the data you and your team use every day is accurate, and up to date?
In a recent survey for the 2025 Quickbase Gray Work Index, only 19% of managers in operations-heavy fields say they’re truly confident in the data behind their decisions.
This means, in industries where execution matters most, around 80% of leaders are making critical decisions. The 2025 Quickbase Gray Work Index reveals the true extent of the problem.
Bloated tech. Manual work. Disconnected tools. It’s not just frustrating, it’s slowing down entire organizations at a time where speed, accuracy and accessibility are everything. We call these productivity roadblocks, Gray Work, and it’s a huge, often overlooked, growing problem. Especially for IT teams, who are the ones expected to untangle the mess, but they’re buried in SaaS sprawl and disconnected tools that only make things worse.
If this all sounds uncomfortably familiar, you’re in the right place.
Consider this blog less of a recap and more of a reflection.
A look at what’s going wrong and where IT leaders can actually take control through smarter consolidation, not more complexity.
Let’s dig in.
Gray Work Is Filling Up the Day
This one’s hard to ignore. Gray Work isn’t just admin clutter. It’s the manual, repetitive work required to navigate broken systems. And when it starts piling up, so do delays, duplication, and burnout.
The Quickbase 2025 Gray Work Index shows just how deep the problem runs:
- 59% of professionals say it feels harder to be productive now than it did a year ago.
- 90% feel overwhelmed by the number of tools required to complete everyday tasks.
- 56% say manual work has actually increased, not decreased.
This isn’t a user error. It’s a systems issue.
Too Many Tools, Not Enough Progress
The average team now uses over 10 tools to manage a single project. That’s not productivity, that’s chaos.
And while 80% of organizations have increased their investment in tech, they’re not seeing returns. Here’s why:
- Systems don’t talk to each other.
- Teams rely on shadow IT to get things done.
- Data is siloed, duplicated, or delayed.
When tools don’t talk, decision-making stalls, visibility fades, and the work just keeps piling up. The solution? Tech stack consolidation.
Confidence in Data is Slipping — Fast
One of the clearest signs of tech stack overload? A growing distrust of data.
Data is only useful if it’s reliable. Without unified systems and real-time access, teams operate in the dark, guessing instead of knowing.
- Only 45% of C-level leaders are confident in their project data.
- That number drops to 36% for VPs and 19% for managers.
- Confidence is lowest in industries like construction and manufacturing, where tech sprawl is most severe.
An alarming takeaway: The closer you are to the work, the less confidence you have in the information guiding your decisions. No dashboard can fix data that’s fragmented at the source.
Manual Work Is Clogging the System
Gray Work shows up in the manual effort behind every task. The rework. The duplicated effort. The hours spent syncing systems that were never meant to work together. Instead of reducing effort, too much tech is actually creating more work:
- 73% of professionals say project tools are blocking collaboration.
- 75% say managing multiple tools prevents a clear view of work.
- 59% spend over 11 hours per week just chasing down information.
IT teams often try to fix this by building integrations, scripts, or manual workflows. But patching isn’t progress. It’s tech debt.
Consolidation helps IT shift from reacting to enabling, reducing friction, and giving teams back their time.
Scaling Can’t Happen When Delays, Duplication, and Budget Hits
Gray Work doesn’t just slow things down. It actively damages performance:
- 72% of organizations experienced project delays last year.
- 60% reported duplicated work.
- 58% went over budget.
These aren’t flukes. They’re symptoms of systems that don’t scale, tools that don’t connect, and processes that don’t support real-time work.
AI adoption is accelerating. It Needs a Strong Foundation
AI is on the rise. But adoption doesn’t mean readiness. 52% of professionals use it daily, and optimism is high. But so are concerns:
- 89% trust AI’s potential.
- 89% also say security and privacy are the top barriers to adoption.
Why the contradiction? Because AI depends on clean, connected, and compliant data. Without IT-led consolidation, AI becomes just another layer of complexity.
Consolidation as a Strategy, not a Shortcut
Before you slam your laptop shut in defeat, consolidation doesn’t mean scrapping everything. It means creating systems that work together, share data, and reduce duplication.
For IT leaders, this means:
- Connecting field and office tools to enable real-time collaboration.
- Replacing tool overload with flexible, governed platforms.
- Building unified data sources for better decision-making.
- Reducing manual work through automation and integration.
Take the First Step Toward Clarity
You can’t eliminate Gray Work by adding more tech. But you can reduce it by rethinking how your tools and teams connect.
Quickbase helps IT leaders consolidate systems, automate workflows, and govern data, without adding more overhead.
Want to know how much Gray Work is holding you back? Take the Gray Work Index quiz to get your personalized score — and see where consolidation could make the biggest difference.
If you only take one thing away from the 2025 Quickbase Gray Work Index, let it be this: the future of productivity depends on what IT teams do now.
Let’s build a system that works smarter today, so work is easier for everyone moving forward.
