Amid gloomy economy Telstra takes aims at productivity gap

News on the state of the economy may be worsening by the day, but that hasn't stopped Telstra from releasing a free report on the “productivity gap” experienced by Australia's top 300 enterprise and government organizations, and how IT can help fix it.

Telstra's executive director of convergent sales, Paul Geason, said the survey was conducted to test the attitudes of enterprises to productivity so “we understand where the ability of organisations is to generate growth”.

“The research revealed interesting data. Organisations have a priority of productivity up there with staff and service levels,” Geason said. “The surprise is while many organisations (78 percent) consider improving productivity, less than 50 percent set targets and measure improvements in productivity.”

This is the first such report from Telstra, done in conjunction with Sweeney Research, is available for free from Telstra's productivity portal.

Geason said the telling piece of data is only 30 percent of organisations can measure the results of investments.

“We have also insight in how ICT is seen as major enabler of productivity so therer is a clear link in goals and leveraging communications to achieve these goals,” he said.

Geason is adamant the report is not a marketing exercise, but rather will benefit the company by helping it understand how it can better assist and articulate the benefits and productivity improvements of communications and IT services.

The research will be done annually and also includes a white paper on ICT as a driver of productivity – an analysis of economic research compiled by ACIL Tasman on the role of ICT as a driver of economic productivity.

This research demonstrates the growing international and Australian evidence of ICT’s key role in driving productivity across the economy, according to Telstra, with studies showing technology’s contribution to productivity growth is up to 75 per cent in some sectors over the last two decades.

Geason said in difficult economic times organisations turn to productivity, which can be defined in many ways.

“How to improve work practices, organisations looking to do more with existing resources, and do more with less as we move forward,” he said.

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