5 Emerging Productivity Infrastructure Use Cases in 2021

The Shift to Long-Term Productivity Investments

The sudden global changes experienced last year compelled organizations across all sectors to rapidly transition to remote work models. This necessitated a swift deployment of resources to equip employees and maintain consistent customer service.

Initially, the focus was on immediate safety measures and providing temporary solutions. However, companies are now concentrating on sustained, strategic investments designed to foster growth and optimize operational efficiency.

Exponential Growth in Productivity Infrastructure

Categories comprising productivity infrastructure experienced substantial expansion in 2020. These include cloud communication services, API platforms, and low-code development tools.

Business process automation and AI software development kits also saw significant growth. This surge in adoption was driven by a heightened emphasis on tools that facilitate communication, collaboration, and transparent workflows.

Accelerated Digital Transformation

McKinsey & Company reports that the pandemic accelerated digital enablement of products by a remarkable seven years.

Furthermore, digitization of customer interactions, supply chain processes, and internal operations advanced by three to four years.

As demand persists, organizations are capitalizing on the advantages that productivity infrastructure offers. This is true for both internal processes and external customer engagement, particularly as companies define their future work strategies.

Companies are increasingly recognizing the value of a seamless end-to-end workflow. This is driving further investment in these critical technologies.

Streamlining Processes and Reducing Potential Issues

Software creators depend on various systems during the development lifecycle to link information, refine it, and accelerate their product launches. Maintaining a competitive edge with both current and future offerings requires this agility.

With substantial volumes of user data readily available, productivity infrastructure can eliminate obstacles to accessing, integrating, and utilizing this data for workflow automation.

The combination of comprehensive interaction data, pre-built machine learning models, automated processes, and adaptable user interface elements empowers developers to significantly decrease development timelines.

Furthermore, robust data security and adherence to regulations are provided, protecting sensitive information and minimizing risk while simultaneously accelerating the return on investment.

Considering the evolving landscape of the post-pandemic work environment, how can productivity infrastructure effectively support organizations in their current state and future aspirations?

Key Benefits of Productivity Infrastructure

• Enhanced data access and integration.
• Accelerated workflow automation.
• Reduced development cycles.
• Improved data protection and compliance.
• Faster time to return on investment.

Addressing the Modern Workplace

The shift towards new work models necessitates infrastructure that is flexible and scalable. Productivity infrastructure plays a vital role in enabling businesses to adapt to these changes.

It allows for seamless collaboration and data sharing, regardless of location, fostering innovation and efficiency. This is crucial for organizations seeking to thrive in a dynamic environment.

Use Cases

Productivity infrastructure has a broad impact, affecting industries that routinely utilize platforms such as email and calendar systems. Essentially, this encompasses all sectors. However, the most compelling applications are found within healthcare, human resources, and sales, where substantial time is dedicated to email correspondence, meeting scheduling, and managing diverse business applications.

Sales and Marketing

A significant portion, around 54%, of customer interactions with support teams occur via email. Sales representatives often dedicate as much as half of their weekly time to repetitive duties like email sending, data entry, and meeting coordination. Implementing productivity infrastructure allows for the automation of these processes, effectively freeing up the equivalent of a full-time sales position. In a city like New York, this can translate to labor cost savings exceeding $33,000 annually, as per Salary.com.

Human Resources and Recruiting

The human resources and recruiting sector stands to gain considerable time savings through the adoption of productivity infrastructure. On average, a recruiter spends eight hours weekly on administrative tasks. Scheduling a single interview can consume anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours. Automation, facilitated by a productivity infrastructure solution, allows recruiters to prioritize candidate sourcing, research, and application review, rather than being burdened by interview scheduling and follow-up coordination.

Healthcare

According to Medbridge Transport, the healthcare industry experiences losses of approximately $150 billion annually due to patient no-shows, representing wasted resources. The current demands on the healthcare system are immense, making the loss of time, money, and resources from missed appointments unacceptable. Traditional, manual processes impede efficient and effective rescheduling. Productivity infrastructure solutions enable healthcare providers to automate workflows and billing, and to streamline patient scheduling, reducing missed appointments and enhancing patient care.

Shipping and Logistics

Productivity infrastructure can streamline operations for shipping and logistics companies by automating tasks such as user profile updates and the timely delivery of shipping notifications. This automation saves considerable manual effort. Furthermore, it enhances the delivery experience by providing complete transparency regarding shipping progress and details, mitigating issues like package theft and boosting customer satisfaction.

Automotive

The automotive industry can greatly benefit from productivity infrastructure features designed for service scheduling and car rental management. This allows internal teams to concentrate on providing a superior customer experience, rather than being preoccupied with scheduling complexities or appointment rescheduling.

The Effects of Remote Work Adoption

The widespread shift towards remote work models prompted organizations to significantly invest in digital tools designed for communication, collaboration, and enhanced customer interaction. This investment was crucial for effectively supporting geographically dispersed teams.

Rapid deployment of robust productivity infrastructure platforms became essential to facilitate this transition.

Recent findings from a PwC survey reveal that over 50% of employees desire a remote work arrangement for at least three days each week. Simultaneously, business leaders are grappling with the challenge of sustaining both a cohesive company culture and consistent productivity levels over extended periods.

The survey highlights a potential risk for companies that are reluctant to fully embrace remote work – they may find themselves at a competitive disadvantage.

Successfully navigating the intersection of employee preferences and the implementation of supportive technologies for remote work and collaboration relies heavily on effective productivity infrastructure solutions.

These solutions streamline essential daily tasks, such as scheduling appointments, distributing communications, and managing follow-up actions.

Gartner reports that this can lead to productivity gains of up to 20%. This provides leadership with assurance that output is not diminishing.

For the customer success management sector, this 20% improvement translates to operational cost reductions ranging from $200,000 to $1 million annually, per customer, as indicated by Gainsight.

The importance of productivity infrastructure is growing and will remain a central focus as companies define their future work strategies.

Organizations are evaluating how to sustain productivity, accelerate software development, and foster innovation within distributed teams.

A thorough understanding of the advantages, applications, and implementation considerations of productivity infrastructure can drive organizations forward in their digital transformation journey.