Office Productivity: Strategies to Jumpstart Growth

by Melba-Jean Bernad, 07 January 2011

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topics:
Enterprise Software and Systems Management

tags:
automation computerization electronic documentation productivity software suites remote access unified communications workplace activity management.

“The amount of wasted time at work is a bigger problem than any of us would like to admit,” observes a white paper by U.S. software maker Ascentive.

If we calculate the average wasted time per employee in a typical office, we end up with 6.75 hours per week, or 337 hours per year (at 50 weeks). That’s over 8 weeks of time, per employee, per year that is wasted. So if the average salary of your employees is US$30,000 a year or US$600 a week, that’s US$4,800 of work time that is non-productive. If you have 20 employees you could be losing almost US$100,000 per year in time paid for, but not received.

Simply defined, office productivity is the relationship between the tasks and equipment needed to produce a product or service, and the value of the final result. There are many ways companies can increase productivity. The most obvious methods involve automation and computerization, which streamline tasks and processes.

Over the years, many hardware and software have appeared and promoted by developers as office productivity enhancing technologies, such as productivity software suites, electronic documentation, unified communications, remote access, and workplace activity management.

Productivity Suites

Perhaps the most popular productivity enhancer, office productivity software is a general term applied to the most common kinds of applications software to increase a user’s productivity. The software includes a suite of functions, such as word processing, spreadsheets, presentation software and an email program.

The most ubiquitous productivity suite is Microsoft’s Office. The company recently released Office 2010, which leverages cloud computing with a suite of web-based applications – online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.

The big news in Office 2010 pricing is not only that prices are down in general, but also that you can get a significant discount if you forgo buying a physical disc (which costs US$499), and instead download the software. You can do this by acquiring a trial version on a new PC, or installing it from a previously purchased CD.

In any of those scenarios, you'll be able to purchase a card (US$349) with a product key that you'll use to activate the software. You’ll be able to use Office Web Apps free of charge – but you’ll need a Windows Live account either way.

“The new editions aren't expensive, but the people who invested in Office 2007 really should get a break,” Yardena Arar of PC World magazine says of Microsoft not offering any upgrade pricing. “If you skipped Office 2007, a switch to Office 2010 is worth considering – even in a recession.”

There’s also OpenOffice, an open source office productivity suite that’s free and compatible with pretty much every other office suite out there. Since it is cross platform, OpenOffice can be used on whatever platform.

Other productivity software available are WordPerfect Suite (which costs about US$250), 602 PC Suite, and ThinkFree, a web-based office application that’s free but doesn’t include a database application.

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