T echnology is often the backbone of many businesses, powering growth, efficiency and adaptability. However, internal systems plus software can cause many challenges for business owners and employees if not monitored in addition to appropriately reviewed.
From out-of-date devices to historical platforms that no longer serve a purpose and processes that are not really aligned across a business, software development company Propel surveyed UK office-based workers in order to determine their daily difficulties with technology.
The top 10 challenges businesses face when it comes to technology¹ are:
- Understanding new capabilities associated with systems (27%)
- Out-of-date software program (26%)
- Workload management issues (22%)
- Manual updates (20%)
- Technology skills gap (20%)
- Limited functionality of tools (19%)
- Software updates (18%)
- Data accuracy manual entry (18%)
- Processing speed (17%)
- Integration problems (16%)
The new research indicates that more than a quarter (27%) regarding workers find difficulty understanding new capabilities of systems, and more than one in four (26%) admit out-of-date software cause everyday problems at work.
The growth within technology abilities shortage over the last 12 months appears to have impacted businesses, as one in five (20%) involving respondents see the current tech expertise gap as a challenge. According to the latest BCS State of the Nation report², there were more than 64, 000 vacancies for UK tech jobs in the third quarter connected with last year.
Splitting the results by industry, those working in logistics and transport (32%), manufacturing and engineering (28%), finance (32%), energy and utilities (30%) and even law (44%) find out-of-date software the particular most challenging technical issue day-to-day.
Although surprisingly, cybersecurity privacy didn’t make typically the top ten overall, this was this biggest challenge for all those doing work in science and pharmaceuticals (40%), equally as difficult as limited functionality with tools, lack of systems integration, slow IT response times and lack of THIS strategy.
With over 1 in six (16%) workers listing system integration like a significant problem, the data suggests that overall, software or system concerns, including incorporation, take up at least 94 working times annually.
The particular survey also revealed that will, on average, throughout industries, companies waste 104 working days a year due to out-of-date laptops, hardware or even technology (that’s at least two hours a week! ). The production industry, inside particular, wastes up to be able to 122 working days per year; for SMEs, in particular, this could be extremely damaging together with cause an incredible potential loss for income.
Digital Transformation Case Study – Simply Washrooms
Simply Washrooms has been creating safe and sustainable working environments and service washrooms for over 30 years. With a nationwide fleet about service providers, Just Washrooms must be able to plan routes, book customers, schedule and additionally track supplies, manage workload and teams on often the move not to mention factor in real-time delays, disruptions or perhaps staffing changes to meet and also deliver their own client’s needs.
Andrew Shelley at Basically Washrooms outlines the impact the digital transformation in their document storage as well as sharing program has had on their delivery of services: “As our business experienced grown, our own documentation techniques requirements got changed and evolved. A critical part of our support offering was providing legally required waste processing notes which needed to be created on the move by our team that services buildings and then stored centrally for all to access. Along with this throughout mind, we wanted for you to put technologies at the heart from our business to help us services our clients more effectively plus become more transparent.
“Working with experts in bespoke software development has completely transformed the document creation, storage in addition to management method. After an in-depth dive into our system and infrastructure, an entire serverless documentation infrastructure has been developed of which integrated around our company to deliver essential waste materials management paperwork to customers instantly. Our new technique has created enterprise efficiencies and even it has removed costly and time-consuming manual access or duplicate logging.
“Knowing that we have the trusted technological innovation partner the fact that understands each of our process inside-out and may provide ongoing support together with monitoring for the essential documentation process ensures that all of us could focus on improving customer service instead of manual data capture or technical challenges. ”
Andy Brown, managing director and co-owner of Propel, summarises: “As a company, all of us spend a new large proportion of all of our time enhancing business effectiveness and best practices around organisations but it still surprised me how much time will be lost because of IT troubles. Technology is now the heartbeat of every organisation, and additionally tracking not to mention improving THAT efficiency is usually an easy way to help improve organization performance and also should give a clear return on investment.
“We often find organizations have methods that had been once fit for purpose but have not been managed or maybe updated over time as your business has evolved. In order to reduce challenges within the workplace and improve accuracy as well as efficiency, firms should be looking to enhance current devices as soon as possible or replace them with some sort of new facilities depending on the features and engineering used.
“With technology innovating daily, it is becoming increasingly difficult to internally recruit and build an IT team with a forward-thinking digital mindset. However , sourcing a digitally-driven team that will can act as an extension and work collaboratively in order to assess your technology plus enhance the existing system could be the exact answer to your own problems in addition to financial goals. ”
Sources:
1 . Survey of 1000 UK office-based workers conducted with TLF Research on September 2022
2. Interact BCS State of the Nation Report 2022