SEAMLESS PRODUCTIVITY

The value of ‘seamless productivity’ may seem elusive, but for the information worker of tomorrow it will all be in a day’s work - Richard Edwards

In a recent 5,000-word missive to company executives and senior managers, Microsoft’s CTO Ray Ozzie, outlined the challenges and opportunities facing the world’s most powerful software company, as it addresses this issue of “Internet Services Disruption”. His interesting and insightful essay covers a great deal of ground, but the section I found most interesting was Ozzie’s vision of what he calls “Seamless Productivity”.

Many individuals now spend more time working away from the office than they do in it, and as a result the boundaries of business are shifting. However, this “new world of work” presents something of a challenge for business leaders, as it would appear that IT departments and end-users are coming into conflict as a result of the changing shape of the business landscape. On the one hand we have the IT department wanting to standardise and centralise systems and technologies, whilst on the other, we have the employee working in the field who wants to adapt and decentralise, so that he or she might better connect and integrate with the customer.

As businesses and organisations become interconnected through processes, systems, and networks, so the barriers that once separated information workers from one another give way and fall. However, whilst removing these obstacles clearly presents many new capabilities and opportunities for forward-looking organisations, it also means that employees are exposed to many more distractions, complications, and interruptions that impact upon their productivity.

E-mail, Instant Messaging, and good old-fashioned telephone calls can cause serious disruption to our working patterns, but the biggest problem by far facing today’s information worker is the matter of ‘information overload’. Maybe the human being is not evolving fast enough, but the fact of the matter is this: the volume of data, and the complexity of applications we use to process it, are beginning to overwhelm the average corporate employee. Indeed, with work-related stress problems now accounting for around a third of all UK absenteeism and sick leave, there is clearly a need for the reassessment of information worker provision, including tools, technology, and training.

Advances in communication technology have transformed the work ‘place’. Fully-featured mobile phones are now in common use, and ubiquitous GPRS telecommunication networks deliver connection speeds similar to that of a dial-up modem. Moreover, with 3G networks now being rolled-out across the world, and able to offer download speeds of around 300 kilobits per second (kbps), mobile workers will effectively have a broadband connection on-tap, wherever they are and whenever they want it.

Once broadband connectivity has become truly pervasive and readily affordable – either through 3G networks, Wi-Fi networks, or a combination of the two – we can expect to see a ‘real’ information transformation take place.  Those with an eye on the world’s economies will have already noticed significant changes taking place, with manufacturing-based economies giving way to services-based models. Offshoring, outsourcing, and streamlining are also peeling back the layers of corporate complexity, revealing the true essence of what is left behind:  intellectual property, process, and people – the raw materials of information worker productivity.

More than ever before, business success in the future will be determined by an organisation’s ability to exploit its corporate information assets; and with fierce competition across all markets and all sectors, organisations must consider every tool and technology available to leverage these assets, especially when it comes to optimising the productivity of their most expensive resources – people. Whilst some industry studies estimate that information workers spend up to 30% of their working day just looking for data they need, others suggest that information workers spend 15-25% of their time on non-productive, information-related activities – an untenable position for any organisation.

Seamless productivity is about enabling the information worker to create, find, and organise documents and data among all of the different desktops, devices, servers, and services to which he or she has access. It means working with people through ‘shared spaces’ that may be Internet service-based, enterprise server-based, or connected directly by using Peer-to-Peer (P2P) technology. It means working within and across locations, such as home(s), hotels, and offices; it also means working across and within different businesses, organisations, workgroups, and projects; and it also means working across and between different IT regimes, business processes, and corporate policies.

Seamless productivity requires an IT experience that is robust, reliable, consistent, logical, integrated, and connected. Some might say that this list represents something of a tall order, and indeed most organisations clearly struggle to deliver information worker environments that meet these requirements; however, it is my contention that if businesses want to claim back non-productive time, whilst also reducing employee ‘info-stress’ and ‘technostress’, then a concerted effort must be made to address these fundamental issues. The solution to our current predicament does not lie in the hands of one particular party; it is a challenge for the whole IT industry to address in unison.

So, what does ‘seamless productivity’ look like, and are we simply chasing a pipe dream?  If we consider the phrase using familiar terms, then productivity is simply the ratio of ‘output’ to ‘input’; and so seamless productivity is about maintaining and optimising this ratio as our working environment changes. Seamless productivity is also about being able to better manage people, process, and data – the core elements of an information worker’s life; and from a pure IT perspective, every information worker wants an IT ‘experience’ that “just works”.

Technology is clearly an enabler where the information worker is concerned, and yet there now exists this love-hate relationship between the user and the tools and technologies they use to do their job. In part, I believe much of this ill will has come about as a result of many years of experimentation by the software industry and corporate IT departments – much of it at the expense of the end-user.  This general lack of consideration, combined with poor or nonexistent IT training, has resulted in a disaffected senior workforce that now views technology as a burden, and just another thing to put up with.

The IT industry will be glad to hear, however, that there are still a few glowing embers in the fire, and that all is not lost where IT is concerned. While corporate use of information technology has been dumbed-down over the last few years, the use of IT in the home has continued to climb steadily; driven on by affordable broadband connections, plenty of interesting diversions on the Internet, and imagination-capturing personal devices, such as smartphones and MP3 players. There now also exists a new generation of employees – The Net Generation.

The Net Generation has grown up in the ‘digital age’: the Internet, PCs, mobile phones, on-line gaming, digital cameras, music players, hand-held computers, and software on-demand are all familiar to today’s 20-somethings.  Currently employed in relatively junior positions, the Net Generation has lived its entire adult life in the digital age. They are often early and rapid adopters of new information technologies, and are not only comfortable, but expect to work collaboratively with others. E-mail, the Web, real-time interactive games, Instant Messaging, P2P filesharing, and sophisticated mobile devices are as familiar to this demographic as the telephone, television, and pocket calculator were to the previous generation.

So, if we consider the Net Generation as the target group for seamless productivity solutions, what challenges does the IT industry need to address? First and foremost is the need to recognise that all information and communication technology devices (PCs, laptops, mobile phones, handhelds, kiosks, consoles, etc.) are capable of enhancing productivity; however, for this to work, manufacturers need to take a view much broader than their own target market.  Organisations can play their part too, by considering the ease with which the user can access corporate systems and transfer information between devices.

The ability to extend and expand the reach and range of corporate systems to employees anywhere, any time, is a key factor in the quest for seamless productivity, and is made possible today thanks to technologies such as GPRS, 3G, Wi-Fi, Virtual Private Networks, laptops, handheld’s, and of course the Internet. However, each technology introduces a different mode of working – on-line and off-line,Web and native, private and public, fast and slow, etc. However, today, switching between these different modes of working is not always as straightforward as it should be, and most of the time it is the end-user who has to try and determine the appropriate option.

Of the vendors out there, Citrix appears to have a good understanding of the requirements of this particular market – especially the ‘access’ component; but even it has pieces of the jigsaw missing. iAnywhere and Softricity offer complementary solutions that make for a more productive workforce away from the office, and should be considered by any organisation with a roaming workforce; but again this is only a partial solution.

Seamless productivity is as much about people as it is technology, and so organisations must continue to invest in people-centric systems. Presence, proximity, and state are three important indicators within the context of productivity, as they enable collaboration with others. If 2005 was the year of Instant Messaging, 2006 looks set to be the year of Internet telephony and location-based services.  When combined with ‘state’ information (‘busy’, ‘in a meeting’, ‘away’, etc.), such services reduce e-mail ping-pong and telephone-tag; instead people communicate and interact when the time is right.

Microsoft’s own seamless productivity vision looks set to revolve around future releases of Office, SharePoint, ‘Live’ services, and of course, Windows Vista; however, Microsoft is not the only player in town. IBM is making steady progress with its Workplace strategy, and Apple has the imagination, the products, and the market attention to provide stiff competition to both. However, organisations should also keep an eye on Google and Yahoo!, as with dozens of personal productivity services already launched between them (and many more in development), Google and Yahoo! are ideally positioned to make life in the digital age more productive for all of us.

Richard Edwards, Senior Research Analyst, The Butler Group
www.butlergroup.com/research

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