The survey found small business workers are stymied by unproductive tasks like sorting through spam e-mail.
Knowledge workers at small
to midsize businesses spend 50 percent of their workday on necessary, yet
unproductive tasks, including routine communications, and filtering incoming
information and correspondence, according to the findings of a new report released
by Fonality and conducted by Webtorials.
The report also showed that
knowledge workers are one of the largest staff components in a typical SMB and
they spend an estimated 36 percent of their time trying to contact customers,
partners or colleagues, find information and schedule meetings. Approximately
14 percent of SMB knowledge workers said their time is spent duplicating information
such as forwarding e-mail or phone calls to confirm if a fax/e-mail/text
message was received and managing unwanted communications like spam e-mail or
unsolicited time-wasting phone calls.
"No one has examined the
impact of inefficient communications on small and midsize business, and the
findings are not only stunning, but they point to a need for immediate change,"
said Steve Taylor, editor-in-chief and publisher for Webtorials. "We found that
reducing a knowledge worker's unproductive time by 25 percent can yield an
extra six weeks in productivity each year, per employee, which should be an
immediate call to action for business owners."
The study concludes that UC
(unified communications), especially cloud-based with its lower total cost of
ownership, could eliminate much of this productivity shortfall. For example,
efficiencies created by UC on a typical firm with 50 knowledge workers with
salaries ranging from $40,000 to $110,000 can recover two-hours a day in
productivity. The corresponding dollar amount of this time savings is valued at
approximately $950,000 annually, according to the report.
Through examination of two
related IT capabilities, UC and cloud-based services, the report concluded each
individually brings "tremendous power" to companies of all sizes. However, many
of the strongest advantages of implementing UC have eluded SMBs because of the
cost of having the IT staff to support this effort. Bringing the two together-implementing
UC as a cloud-based service-provides an ideal confluence for cost-conscious
businesses, the survey results indicated.
"For more than a decade,
SMBs have produced two-thirds of North America's jobs, but due to the cost and
complexity of traditional legacy solutions, they have not been able to benefit
from the same communications tools as Fortune 500 companies," said Dean
Mansfield, president and CEO of Fonality, a small-business communications
company. "Now, the emerging intersection of cloud technologies, with mobility
applications and Unified Communications, makes it possible for businesses of
all sizes to share information faster and more effectively than ever."
Nathan Eddy is Associate Editor, Midmarket, at eWEEK.com. Before joining eWEEK.com, Nate was a writer with ChannelWeb and he served as an editor at FierceMarkets. He is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
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