Featured Series: Productivity Management Tech Trends

The idea of keeping tabs on employees using advanced technology could remind some chief information officers of Big Brother. However, it is imperative to acknowledge the strong tie between gauging staff productivity and optimizing efficiency. Not only will sophisticated tools allow IT professionals to increase the transparency of their businesses’ operations, but it will also boost employee accountability and ultimately drive profits.There is a reason that management has been an integral fixture within companies practically since the birth of industry. Staff members have never been granted free rein, and the vast majority of businesses have had a hierarchical structure to establish some sort of authoritative presence that keeps everyone on track.IT provides productivity transparency for allUpper-level executives have used a variety of tactics to guarantee that representatives are fulfilling their allotted duties at a reasonable pace. In the past, it may have been more difficult to acquire tangible data indicating individual employee’s productivity, so most of the insight that management had to go on was anecdotal. However, thanks to developments in IT, companies now have access to solutions that use real-time metrics and provide CIOs and other executives with the most latest information about their staff members’ productivity.Although organizations in different fields are likely to use these solutions to ensure that their employees are completing certain key tasks, these forms of IT are bound to be helpful to companies of all kinds. For instance, Business 2 Community cited statistics revealing the success of these solutions throughout field service operations, and the source also explained that they have a number of benefits for businesses in general.The source pointed out that implementing these IT metrics is likely to increase visibility throughout companies’ operations, as management can take a look at the status of certain tasks in terms of their completion via mobile platforms. This means that business executives could use their smartphones to check in and assess how well employees are performing.For example, Business 2 Community highlighted how companies with a number of staff members working out in the field, rather than the office, can have their CIOs incorporate these solutions into their daily management practices to ensure only the highest caliber of efficiency. With these programs, managers can look to determine anything from the number of client appointments have been successfully met to the amount of capital that each representative generated through the sales he or she made.Analytics to overhaul operations long-termFrom an immediate perspective, this information allows companies to get the gist of their day-to-day operations – where they may be succeeding and where there may be room from improvement. With that said, in the long run, these IT innovations can enable organizations to completely overhaul their operations, rendering revolutionary results. Solutions of this sort can compile data over time, also providing tools that businesses can then use to perform in-depth analytics on employee performance and productivity.Equipped with precise graphs, charts and raw statistics, executives would be able to address problem areas and make their organizations efficient overall. For instance, consulting the metrics outlined in IT-generated reports, companies can make informed decisions when it comes to optimizing the use of their teams of representatives. If organizations have the data that allows them to pinpoint each employee’s strengths and weaknesses, companies can then make adjustments in terms of the distribution of duties, assigning staff members to the tasks they do best and fastest.Additionally, companies may find that insight uncovered by these IT tools could reveal that various employees are consistently underperforming. In this case, business managers should come up with strategies that would enable these staff members to bring their productivity up to par. Otherwise, they may have to reassess these representatives’ positions at their companies, as difficult as that may be. Ultimately, this will guarantee that organizations are maximizing their efficiency and, consequently, their profits.