Information communication technology (ICT) is also critical as it connects customers, organisations and suppliers. Technology adoption is often cited as an indicator of productivity. But my research shows it’s not adoption in and of itself that delivers gains but ICT integration that matters.
Take, for example, the travel and tourism industry, which is regarded as a prime user of technology. My research shows that while there is a high degree of adoption of ICT, the lack of integration between systems, across stakeholders, is a major inhibitor to service productivity in this sector.
Information is still being reformatted, rekeyed and redistributed manually within organisations, sometimes among five different ICT systems. This lack of systems integration leaves organisations with a hole in the centre. As business struggles to connect with customers using a range of “must-have” platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn, the problem worsens – the hole gets even bigger.
Our productivity problem is a like an epidemic. It affects many businesses and threatens the prosperity of future Australians yet it is poorly understood and goes largely unnoticed, especially in a service economy. If a problem of this size and scale were to affect people’s health, money would be raised for further research to isolate the causes and cures for the malady.
The problem requires attention and funding from policymakers to foster initiatives aimed at tackling productivity failure. Collaboration is required, with business sharing transactional data and industry intelligence with academics and researchers, so together they can identify gaps and benchmark within and between industries, with the goal of achieving the productivity increase needed to maintain our standard of living.
Moira Scerri is a PhD Student in productivity for service and network based firms at University of Technology, Sydney.
Renu Agarwal is a senior lecturer in innovation and service operations management at University of Technology, Sydney.
This article was originally published at The Conversation. Read the original article.
