It's Not The Technology, It's How You Use It

from the well...-duh dept

For years, people would look at studies of technology use in companies and point out that, in the aggregate, it showed no specific productivity gain - and summarize that technology was useless. That's a very bad misread on statistics. The fact was that many companies - looked at individually - were using technology in a way to improve productivity, while many others were using it poorly. Thus, they were pretty much canceling each other out. Now, studies are beginning to support this finding - and are pointing out that it's not technology itself that improves productivity, but how companies use the technology - the so-called "organizational capital" within the company that improves productivity. As always, it comes down to execution, and not the tools itself. It's also something that is often ignored by short-sighted companies looking to "cut costs" without realizing the overall damage they're doing to other parts of their business. However, companies that take care of their organizational capital, and look to enhance it with technology tend to be much more productive. This includes understand what types of jobs fit with what types of processes. For example, realizing that certain jobs require more decentralization and more teamwork and collaboration - and providing them the proper tools and information to do so. Meanwhile, other jobs should be more centralized and automated when possible. Most of these things appear obvious when you look at them, but so many companies ignore them for short-term decisions that don't take these important details into account.