Productivity a top corporate issue

Organisations are under increasing pressure to improve employee productivity and reduce costs. In turn, senior executives have identified a need to use information technology more aggressively to achieve these goals, according to new global research from Dimension Data.

The research was commissioned by Dimension Data and conducted by Datamonitor, which surveyed IT managers and end-users across 13 countries, including the UK.

The study indicates that the top three objectives for organisationsí unified communication investment strategies for 2007 and beyond are to raise productivity, increase customer satisfaction and cut costs. Unified communications enables richer interaction by integrating most forms of communication (voice, e-mail, fax, instant messaging and video) through a single interface.

Rob Lopez, Managing Director, Solutions at Dimension Data says, ìProductivity remains a crucial driver behind organisationsí communications strategies. As such, flexi-working (the ability to work anytime at any location), supported by technologies including e-mail, mobile telephony and instant messaging and presence information, can play a significant role in increasing employee productivity.î

The research findings support this trend, and show organisationsí motivations for offering flexible working focus around increasing employee productivity (41%), employee retention (13%), and compliance with existing/future work-home initiatives (12%).

Statistics by country reflect that in most countries in the Middle East and Africa, emphasis is on employee productivity. In the UK, productivity is the top driver for 45% of organisations, followed by retention on 13%. In other European countries, there is a focus on both employee productivity and compliance, while the United States and Asia focus on employee productivity and retention.

Lopez continues, ìEmployees are under no illusion that organisations are seeking to deploy ubiquitous communication tools and flexi-work initiatives to increase their productivity. Nevertheless, they are not overly cynical and adopt flexi-work readily as a result of the perceived personal gain. The high levels of technology adoption also indicate that the functionality these tools bring is seen as beneficial.î Lopez also points out that the larger the company, the more likely it will support flexible working.

According to the survey, 57% of the organisations interviewed (58% in the UK) offer flexible working with active IT support, 15% offer flexible working with no IT support (15% in the UK), and 29% do not offer flexible working (28% in the UK). Mobile telephony and VPN are the most widely available tools for flexi-work. There is scope to give flexi-workers more technologies such as instant messaging to improve their productivity.

ìTo successfully roll-out flexi-work, organisations need to offer support. This requires additional resources and management capability of the infrastructure, as well as end-user education around the best way to securely use these technologies,î Lopez concludes.

Other key findings in the Dimension Data survey include: unified communications is a vibrant and developing market; security is a concern rather than an issue; unified communications technologies are more likely to be outsourced or externally managed than other technologies; and unified communications mindshares are dominated by alpha brands within each market.