Once a Luxury, Information Mobility Now ‘Necessary’ for Employees: Survey
MALVERN, Pa. – In this world of work, it’s common for knowledge workers to carry a powerful computer in their pocket in the form of a smartphone or tablet. And many organizations sit on terabytes of business information. Yet even with these powerful assets at our disposal, how many of us can really work as productively on the road as we do in the office?>/p>
Not many.
That helps explain why IT decision makers and business unit leaders have identified “information mobility” as a need for a productive workforce. In a recent online survey among select industries in the U.S. commissioned by Ricoh, a global technology company, 9 out of 10 respondents said information mobility is not just nice to have, but in fact “necessary” for their employees, and nearly half characterized it as “very necessary.”
“Our organization has changed a great deal over the years, however until recently, we were still using the same archaic paper-based accounts payable system. It didn’t allow us to access and share information effectively. Invoice processing was often delayed, particularly while approvers were traveling,” said David Enriquez, Senior Director, Information Technology at The Miami Marlins. “Ricoh has helped us by implementing a workflow application that enabled routing rules to be entered for multiple approvers and even allowed some invoices to be processed automatically, where appropriate. Ricoh has helped us work better and easily access and manage our information even when on the road, and as a result, we’ve achieved significant time savings and efficiencies.”
With more than 75 years of innovation dedicated to helping individuals work smarter, Ricoh sees greater information mobility as a universal need across many vertical industries, including healthcare, legal, government and higher education to name a few.
Lack of information mobility would likely harm employee productivity, business processes, and innovation, said approximately 8 out of 10 respondents to the Ricoh survey. More than 2 out of 3 said revenue growth, time to market and new customer acquisition would also likely suffer without it.
What we mean
Ricoh defines information mobility this way:
Information Mobility is the ability to make information move to and from its original form whether it is paper, other legacy formats or digital; and the ability to transform for re-purpose, re-use, and search for information; and ultimately the ability to access information anytime, anywhere. To provide information mobility for the new world of work, organizations must obtain and align a strong technical infrastructure, agile information system, and deep understanding of the workstyle innovations required by today’s workforce.
So what exactly does this mean? To provide deeper understanding, actionable insights, best practices and success stories, Ricoh today unveiled Work Intelligently, an interactive resource that can be found at www.workintelligent.ly. The interactive site helps organizations navigate the new world of work by touching on all aspects of information mobility – from the technologies that are revolutionizing the way people collaborate and connect, to the way information is harnessed to power big ideas, to understanding the work style innovations a workforce is implementing to bridge the gaps.
“It’s time to make your information work for you versus making you work to get your information,” said Dominic Pontrelli, Senior Vice President of Marketing, Ricoh Americas Corporation. “For example, bringing your own device (BYOD) is no longer a perk. Workers will bring their own device. In order to maximize efficiency with increasingly remote and mobile workforces, organizations need to accommodate the devices that maximize the personal workstyles of their individual employees, and that in turn, will substantially improve their chances for optimal business performance.”
For more information, please visit www.ricoh-usa.com
