Study: companies strain to service employees.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: TECHNOLOGY - Survey

Large organizations are increasingly finding revenue, productivity and innovation are at stake based on how effectively they help their employees use technology and fix it when it breaks, according to a Unisys Corp. study of end-user technology service practices at about 250 North American organizations. This comes despite the fact that spending on end-user services has exploded in many organizations.

The study of both businesses and government institutions found that many are struggling to effectively and cost-efficiently help employees fix and use their laptops, desktops, personal digital assistants, mobile phones and other technologies. With so much attention on fixing technology that doesn't work, end-user services groups are having a hard time getting ahead of users--i.e., improving productivity and bringing innovation to the processes of the company's most critical technology users (salespeople, customer service reps, etc.) who directly impact revenue on a daily basis.

One-size-fits-all service policies and stringent controls on what technologies employees are allowed to use are not solving the issue, the study found. This is especially true because employees are rapidly adopting easier-to-use consumer technologies in the workplace.

The study, which included an extensive survey of 243 North...