When a technology failure causes a big drop in productivity, it’s obvious. For instance, you can’t get invoices out because the print server dies, or the phones sporadically disconnect. But many technology failures aren’t instantaneous, and technology “uptime” isn’t a black-and-white issue. Without regular proactive maintenance, the efficiency of your servers and workstations will decline over time. Because the change is gradual, it’s harder to notice – but that doesn’t mean it has any less of an effect on your bottom line! Here are three signs that you’re suffering from technology decay:
Waiting on Technology– It takes employees a while to recover from a distraction. How long? Some studies say as little as 4 minutes, while others say it takes 20 minutes or more. Regardless, if any of your employees are performing a task that requires them to wait on technology to respond throughout the day, they’re probably going to find a distraction while the time passes. That distraction may be work-related, or it might not, but either way you’re going to lose time while they switch from one task to another, waiting for their computer to respond. This time loss could come from a delay when accessing customer information on a server, waiting for a resource to become available, or even waiting for a slow network to push a job to the printer.
Out-of-Office Delays – Some companies have a large contingent of employees that travel regularly – hopefully, these companies have invested in remote access technology that allows quick and easy access to applications, files, and emails on the company network. Many other companies, however, have employees that occasionally travel, or employees that have to work from home unexpectedly. These companies are less likely to have a robust remote access system.
If employees blame task delays on their absence from the office, this can be fixed with remote access services. Even if none of your employees are regularly out of the office, it’s surprising how regular it can be when you add up all of the days that any of your employees had to work from home unexpectedly. Also, remote access reduces the loss of productivity you’ll face if one of your employees does have to unexpectedly work remotely.
Notecards Everywhere – How complex is it to get a single task done? If your employees need a pile of logins and instructions to perform relatively simple tasks, there’s a very good chance that there’s a simpler way to get things done. If this is a task that’s performed regularly, it’s probably wasting hours and hours of employee time each week. Just as importantly as your efficiency, this has a negative impact on employee morale – wasting time navigating frustrating processes doesn’t make anyone feel like their job is providing more value to their employer, and it doesn’t reduce stress, either.
Is technology disrupting your company’s productivity? If so, call WingSwept at 919.779.0954 or contact us online to learn how our Managed Services offering can help you get better results from your technology.