Productivity gains to business of deploying Blackberry
I came across an article earlier today analyzing the return on investment of deploying a Blackberry solution in an enterprise.
The study is published on the Blackberry website (here) so should probably be taken with a grain of salt for obvious reasons, however I find it’s results quite interesting.
The report suggests that “typical (median) end user converts 60 minutes of downtime into productive time per day” – That is one hour per day that the average user would be being paid for where they are not not productive into productive time – And the survey states they have taken a conservative approach.
For a person on a $40,000 salary, this equates to $5,000 per year of recovered productivity!
There are issues that the analysis does not cover, such as the social impacts of a constant connection to work, but from a business point of view the numbers sure do seem to stack up.
The survey puts the TCO at about $1,325 PA, so if the number are correct, that is a huge benifit to business.
I don’t use a Blackberry myself, any out of office email I do for work is done on a Laptop over a VPN connection. For those of you who DO use one, do you agree with the finding above?
Hi Adam, I have a blackberry (or dingleberry as I call it) that work provided for me. I opposed getting one for over a year while my managers tried to force it on me. Now I am working 3 days/week I actually asked for it so I could be more in touch as I am out of the office a lot.
A agree with the findings, in fact work is recovering much more than 60min/day from me since I got it. The culture of the working day has changed and I am closer to 24/7 than 8 hours/day Mon-Fri.
To get more to the conditions in the study, I still agree to the findings. Every person including myself is away from their desk frequently throughout the day and the dingleberry is always attached to you so you can respond to priorities. You end up multitasking a LOT more… even in traffic jams. Yes very good for work… not so good for personal time. The dingleberry is especially useful for people who deal with international work contacts like I do… except when you are trying to have a date with your wife!!!
If it wasn’t for my unique work conditions I would prefer not to have one as I do like to “unplug” when I am on personal time.
Once you have one it is hard to get rid of it because you are so much more contactable even with family… alas!
Thanks Mark. I often do emails late at night on my Laptop. I’d much prefer a Blackberry as I could not only be more timely with my responses, but it would allow me to respond at a time more convenience to me, such as on my way home, rather than in my own time later in the evening.