How to measure the impact your tech environment is having on the productivity of your people and overall business
By Orrin Klopper, CEO of Netsurit
A little over two decades ago, a man called Watts S. Humphrey, more affectionately known as the “father of software quality” said, “every business is a software business.” While he was slightly ahead of his time, this message has been repeated by many well-known tech pundits today like Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella who said that it’s not about one simple software solution. It’s really you, yourself, thinking of your own future as a digital company. Indeed, technology is no longer a “nice to have”, it’s an imperative if businesses want to succeed in an increasingly digital post-pandemic world. In fact, it’s the engine powering almost every single business in the 21st century.
The global Covid pandemic has forced businesses to re-evaluate how they manage their user IT experience. Aspects about the workplace that were interesting and trending topics of discussion, such as how productive people are when working from home, suddenly became a reality for many. These were now business-critical elements that shifted businesses and business leaders’ perception regarding the user experience.
So how can a business leader properly service this, if they are measuring performance “by ear” so to speak? If we compare technology infrastructure to a car engine, how do you know if your car is performing optimally or if something is wrong when you don’t have gauges to measure revs per minute, fuel consumption, tire pressure, speed, etc… How do you even know what to measure if you’re not a mechanic or a car enthusiast? In addition, IT operations currently take up 75%+ of an internal team’s time on average. This leaves less than 25% of the team’s capacity available to execute on key initiatives or contribute strategically to the organisation.
Most business leaders today are uncertain about the impact the tech environment is having on the productivity of their people. In South Africa, the first few months of lockdown in 2020 were a huge learning curve for most firms, with many immediately questioning the pros and cons of this new way of working. A key assumption was that our work-life balance would diminish.
In today’s highly mobile, fast-paced age of the internet, there are few places left where the average worker is beyond the reach of the office. In office working in certain sectors have become a thing of the past, with mobile and hybrid work forces becoming the norm. Employees are increasingly experiencing difficulties in balancing work and their private life, leading to increased stress, decreased life satisfaction, and even more instances of illness.
Technology in the workplace is used to create a partnership between humans and machines by leveraging machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI) and things like robotic process automation (RPA) to enhance performance.
Peter Drucker, a well-known Austrian management consultant, educator and author said: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” And if you can’t manage it, you can’t bring that knowledge into mobile workforces and ensure the effectiveness of workers who may no longer be in their managers’ line of sight.
By having a partner who can act as a diagnostics tool, providing full visibility into how the technology is running, as well as giving insights into how to better optimise it so that the business can run more smoothly, organisations are able to achieve their goals more quickly.