IT Investment Increasing in Tools that Drive Productivity

A recent InformationWeek article references a Deloitte survey that indicates business are increasing IT spend on tools that drive employee productivity.

Increased productivity is the top reason for the survey companies’ investments in technology. Cloud infrastructure, analytics, and big data rank at the top of technologies most likely to generate productivity gains.

In fact, “Improving existing business processes” has trailed only “Managing cybersecurity and information risk” as the highest IT priority among organizations for the last two years of the survey. While overall headcount has stayed steady or increased slightly over the last few years, the expectations for productivity have also risen.

At the same time, the Bureau of Labor Statistics keeps telling us that productivity in America has been declining for over a decade. Some argue that a major component in the productivity drop stems from a lack of investment in employee tools and training in favor of organizations “hoarding” cash or paying out dividends the last several years. However, perhaps this is shifting as IT leaders are being pushed to increase productivity and efficiency with new technology and tools more than ever.

Productivity Through Process Automation

Giving employees the tools to get repetitive or cumbersome tasks done more efficiently can have a rapid impact on overall productivity. In addition, it allows employees to focus on the higher-level types of work that mean real gains for the organization.

Status updates, check-in meetings, emails, phone calls, etc. are low-value tasks should be replaced by more automation and better collaboration.

The reality is that most employees spend as much time “handling” work as they do actually doing work. Status updates, check-in meetings, emails, phone calls, etc. are low-value tasks that should be replaced by more automation and better collaboration.

While business process management has been around a long time, the tools that enable the automated workflows recommended by BPM initiatives have gotten easier to use, better integrated and more powerful. IT leaders at organizations of all sizes have begun to embrace the idea of investing in flexible, cloud-based workflow automation platforms that can be rapidly deployed, available 24X7 on any device and configured to their business users’ unique specifications.

At the end of the day, we expect IT leaders will put budget toward tools that have a clear impact on productivity while carefully dipping their toes into newer, less obvious productivity tools like iOT, VR, etc.