Technology - are you using it properly?

Technology. It promised so much - paperless offices, office automation, ease-of-use - and yet, far too often, it has failed to deliver on it’s promises. Printer jams, slow networks, endless pop-ups, viruses, alerts - it is enough to drive an executive crazy.

But it doesn’t need to be this way. Far too many companies approach technology and it’s application with a restrictive, limited scope vision that fails to truly encompass your organization’s business methodology, processes, and technology needs. The result? Frustrated users, lost revenue opportunities, wasted time.

I've seen some truly poor applications of technology over the past year, some of which were probably costing their businesses hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost productivity.

Top of the list was a small (about 90 users) textiles firm that had operations in both the US and China. When new orders came in, they were manually entered into a system in New York, then emailed to China, where someone would re-enter the data into a spreadsheet that would run a few macros and apply some forumula's.

Next, the operator would print out the document, which would be checked by accounting, who would then email a 3rd printed form back to the US, for processing. The entire process, from order taking to actual placing of the order, was about 2 hours, and was extremely manpower intensive. They had a backlog of orders of over 5 months.

A simple sharepoint application completely changed the way they did business. For an estimated 25k in costs, they have managed, in little more than 6 months, to completely eliminate their order backlog, drop their processing time to less than 15 minutes, and find hidden revenue streams by using data mining techniques that had been completely unrealized before.

Using a top-down approach to understanding your business, technology can be tter applied, money can be saved, and processes can be improved. This ‘holistic’ view of your business and it’s use of modern tools has some companies to help a wide-range of businesses better understand their operating costs, find new sources of previously untapped revenue, and reduce the cost and time required for operations. The LCO Group, a New York based IT consulting firm, has business/technology analysts who specialize in 'technology application.' I have seen the results firsthand - quite impressive indeed.