Has the Promise of Gaining Time Through Technology Failed?

by Jeff Irby

I have had recent conversations with executives wondering about the promise of technology to save us time. The common concern is that they and their people seem to be working more hours than ever before. It appears technology has added, not reduced demands on our time.

I probed with the question, “How many processes has your organization turned into self-service processes?” Many responded proudly that they had been able to reduce operating expenses substantially by transferring processes previously performed by human resources (HR), finance, procurement and travel staff to the employee. “We have been able to reduce our headcount, and therefore our expenses, substantially.”

I then asked, “What does the cost to complete these self-service transactions cost the company?” The common answer was, “Nothing. We now have our employees doing the tasks without the extra layer of people.” My follow up question was, “What responsibilities did you take off of your employees to make room for this new work?” Most gave me a blank stare.

In truth, poorly-deployed self-service transfers tasks from one person to another. It does not eliminate the task; it simply re-allocates it to another person, often an employee who is paid substantially more and less skilled in completing the work than the original transaction processor.  As a result, self-service transaction actually costs the organization more to process and takes away valuable time from critical revenue and operational work.

Self-service is a wonderful tool, but when we don’t implement it well, it has negative effects on the organization. Time is and always will be a fixed resource. Poorly implemented self-service processes can cause employees to expand the amount of time they spend working. Technology hasn’t failed to deliver on its promise to save us time; we have failed to implement tools to our advantage.

Ask yourself, “Do I really want a person with a six-figure salary trying figure out how to enter HR information into our systems? How many processes have we delegated to our employees that really have nothing to do with value creation or what we hired them to do?

Has your organization truly calculated the cost of self-service to the organization? Have you been able to eliminate transactions altogether, not just re-allocate the work?  What work do you do today that would be better handled by someone or something else?

I would be happy to help your organization explore these questions. You can contact me at jeff@gtddc.com.