For Operations
Improving productivity through IT
Just about any job today requires some IT system to support people’s performance. Yet productivity is not getting better. The deployment of new technology is not affecting performance positively and training, as well as support, of workplace applications is increasing to cope with people’s inability to effectively use them.
This means that the return on investment from IT in terms of productivity, reduced support and maintenance is not being realised. The hidden cost of IT through excessive post-launch support costs and continual upgrades to get the application to do what it’s supposed to is minimised or eliminated altogether.
Application development is also taking longer, even for simple applications, because the requirements continuously change and end users can’t use the application. Organisation-wide efforts to introduce ERP applications, while well intentioned, cause more problems than it does improvements.
Why? As far as the end user is concerned, the user interface is the application. Yet the interface is often the last thing done during development. By understanding the causality behind performance in the workplace and focussing on capturing user requirements, workflows, user interfaces can be designed that support and guide people’s performance.
You get higher levels of performance, with greater standardisation and compliance with policy and procedure.
We help you achieve the following:
- Your new applications are easier and faster to use than the old one
- Your staff need to use Access databases and Excel spreadsheets and you want them to use the ERP application to centralise and standardise people’s work activities
- Your current ERP or CRM has too many screens, making process slower than before, and you need to make it easier for your staff to get their job done
- Your staff don’t need training or support to use the new application, cutting ongoing support and help desk costs
- You need to integrate a range of applications into a unified portal to improve productivity and remove redundancy
'First impressions count. If you don’t get that (the user interface) right then you have major problems and users won’t look beyond that. PTG helped us get this critical component right’
'PTG linked our site with work processes and issues. Users are time poor and need to get stuff quickly and not spend time scrolling around. Users require intuitiveness in the interface, not hands on teaching. Usability must be tested against real users and not a programmer’s view of the world.'
John Lewis, Program Director, NSW Department of Commerce.
Business benefits from using PTG Global on your IT projects
We have achieved the following for our customers:
- An intranet that greatly increased compliance with policy and procedures
- Redesign of an employee self service website, reducing screen count by 60% and increasing functionality and compliance with procedure and satisfaction
- Requirements and design of an interface, with immediate end user buy-in and increased individual performance
- Alignment of the intranet and internet for a knowledge based organisation, resulting in the reduction of costs and the provision of a consistent experience for self service or call centre service
- Development of a complex case management application for cross-agency collaboration, standardising workflows and practices, protecting the welfare of clients
- Standardisation and staff / departmental buy-in of an intranet styleguide and templates across large, silo-based media organisation
- An aggregate $2,000,000 time saving in salary costs for people using a transactional system
How to make your technology work — the next steps
Successfully engage a vendor
If you’re about to engage a technology vendor, use XPVendorEngagement™ to completely and unambiguously specify the application requirements so you can choose a vendor that can deliver a usable system on time and on budget.
Improve an existing application
If you have an existing application, XPAudit™ will give you a rapid snapshot of your application’s strengths and weaknesses, with quick wins and a long term road map to drive business and user performance.
Get your IT right the first time
For new applications, we start with XPRequirements™ to understand the drivers behind performance and specify the how the application must behave to deliver business improvement.
Email us at info@ptg-global.com or call 1300 660 973 to discuss how we can help you make your technology work.
