THE WORK LOAD.

• Author: Waller, Britta
• Position: North Carolina business - Illustration - Statistical Data Included

Is the heavy emphasis on high-tech reflected in the payrolls of the state's largest employers? Depends on how it's weighed.

Scan this year's list of the state's 100 largest employers, and you might wonder, why all the fuss about technology? You won't find many high-tech companies -- just one, No. 63 SAS Institute Inc., if you count only software makers. Two, if you add computer makers such as IBM Corp., which ranked fourth. Three, if you include Electronic Data Systems Corp., a computer-services company that holds down the 55th spot.

After that it gets murky. Do you count companies such as No. 20 Nortel Networks Corp., which is adding Internet switching to its traditional telecommunications product line? How about No. 81 CommScope Inc., a Hickory-based supplier of high-speed, high-capacity cable that should play a key role in the convergence of Internet, television and telephone? Then there are the companies that obviously rely heavily on technology, such as telecom giant BellSouth Corp., No. 23, or its rival, No. 88 MCI WorldCom Inc. As deregulation sweeps through the nation, both companies are upgrading their networks with high-tech software and hardware.

Say you count all these companies. You are still only talking about 10 or so out of a 100. Ten percent. Some impact.

But looking closer, you'll find that technology's creep has affected most, if not every, company on the list to some degree. Greater availability of performance-enhancing software and hardware combined with the need to keep pace with competitors' technology-driven advances in efficiency, security, record keeping and cost reduction has changed the way business is done and jobs are performed in North Carolina -- from the trailblazers to the more traditional companies.

It's no surprise that technology is transforming the way software giant SAS Institute's employees work. About two years ago, the Cary-based company found a way to link its offices and subsidiaries in 46 countries with one another and with its employees calling on customers in 115 countries. Weekly, SAS conducts two to three Webcasts -- real-time videos over its intranet -- for training, sales and marketing meetings and companywide discussions.

Bill Marriott, director of SAS's video production, says the multimedia Webcasts are a big improvement over the videotapes the company used to distribute to its offices worldwide. They took weeks to produce and format for the different players in each country. "It was a very inefficient, one-way monologue," he says. The Webcasts are archived online along with other video clips employees can call up any time. Salespeople, for example, can search the library for customer testimonials, pull up a digital film clip days after it was produced and drop it into the presentation for a prospective client, and every employee can see the clip from a SAS executive's interview on CNN.

"Our company is unique in that people do not resist technology. More often they drive and demand it," Marriott says. Employee use of the database is tracked, he adds. "We get detailed information by IP addresses in the company by what they watched, when they watched it, how long they watched it."

You don't have to look at high-tech companies to see the impact of technology on Tar Heel workers. It affects workers in every industry -- from the supermarket checkout guy, who scans product bar codes into a cash register that tracks customer buying information, to the millworker who troubleshoots computer-controlled machinery on the factory floor.

Durham-based Kerr Drug Inc., No. 88 on the list, doesn't have the resources of its bigger competitors and lags in many areas of technology use. But rising prescription volumes from aging baby boomers, combined with a shortage of pharmacists, have forced Kerr and other drugstores to rely more on technology to free pharmacists from more mechanical tasks.

Sophisticated communication technology can answer the phone, tell customers the status of their prescriptions, fax refill requests to doctor's offices and call patients to tell them their prescription is ready. Laser counting machines allow pharmacists to punch in the number of pills and fill a bottle with the correct amount, instead of counting manually.

Only 10% of Kerr stores have the laborsaving counting machines and interactive voice technology. The rest will get voice technology...