Technology Keeps Staffers Productive

BlackBerries and other hand-held devices have taken executive communication to new levels. Some professionals have become so attached to the wireless technology, they can’t put it down.
“BlackBerries are not really BlackBerries, they’re Crackberries,” said Mary Beth Books, president of The Bank of Fayetteville. “I’m as hooked as I possibly can be hooked and I’m e-mailing at all hours of the day.
“When you can’t sleep at night, what else are you going to do?”
Deal details are ironed out and ideas are exchanged through text messages that serve as e-mails in near real time. Whether it’s improved or hindered employee productivity remains a debate, but most agree the way we do business will never be the same.
Fewer lunch meetings and one-on-one time brainstorming in boardrooms with prospective partners are drawbacks to technology. On the flip side, golf courses and tennis courts now can serve as boardrooms because anywhere a cell signal is available, so is the palm power to trade text.
While a few national companies are considering limiting usage by employees while on the clock, more are relying on it.
Cooper Communities, the origional developer of Bella Vista, has properties in nine states and outfits top executives with hand-held devices called Treos, made by Palm Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif.
Despite regular travel around the country, each of Cooper’s top brass still needs 24/7 access to not only e-mails, but sales and operational reports as well.
“We depend on them,” said Pat Samples, vice president of information systems for Cooper. “We have got to have access all the time, so if [a traveling executive] is sitting in the airport, they can see what’s going on in real time.
“So it’s made us more productive for sure.”
In most instances, that’s true. But how productive is the worker who fumbles a phone call and enters data onto a spreadsheet all while sending messages via BlackBerry?
Perhaps it’s contributed to an escalation of adult attention deficit/hyperactivity disorders cases in the workplace.
“I get accused on needing my daily dose of Ritalin, that’s for sure,” Brooks joked. “I’m the poster child for ADD.”
But, in the past year worldwide shipments of BlackBerries have increased a robust 143 percent, according to Gartner Inc., an independent research and advisory firm based in Stamford, Conn.
During the first quarter of this year, Research in Motion (the Waterloo, Ontario-based company that makes the BlackBerry) shipped 1.25 million of what Gartner classifies as “Smartphones.” RIM shipped more than 517,000 to distributors in the first quarter of 2006.

Nothing Personal
Cooper Communities hasn’t contributed to any of the BlackBerries’ sales as its employees chose to use the Palm Treos because of added technologies on the hand-held devices that meshed well with Cooper’s systems.
Samples has been with Cooper for 29 years and has witnessed the evolution of communication switch from phones to faxes to e-mail. He oversees about 430 users of the company’s software, but said he’s seeing less and less as technology overtakes the need for human interaction.
“We used to have contract staff at every sales location for our timeshare resorts,” Samples said. “Now there’s people [in Rogers] doing it and cranking out those contracts when people decide to buy.
“So where we had 30 or 40 people handling that stuff five years ago, we now have five.”
The main complaint is there’s less one-on-one time with prospective clients or partners. Cooper is in the process of negotiating a four-month technology deal with a firm in Dallas. Samples said he’s actually met with the company for “about 16 hours” total, but said the deal will be finalized in a few weeks.
“Deals that used to take weeks can be cut in a matter of minutes now,” said Samples, who spends between two hours and three hours a day on his hand-held. “And I’ve done many deals with people I’ve never met.”

Communication Station
Elise Mitchell, president of Mitchell Communications in Fayetteville, stays in touch with many clients through e-mail or text messaging. Communication is the nature of her public relations firm, but the way she communicates is a well-thought-out process.
“Consider before any communication what is the most effective method for me to communicate in order for me to accomplish the task the most effectively and efficiently,” Mitchell said. “And sometimes, one will outweigh the other.”
Each of Mitchell’s clients prefer different methods of communication. Often, a succinct, yet comprehensive e-mail that summarizes everything is better than a lengthy phone call because the client can look over the details whenever it’s convenient for them.
E-mails can sometimes be too casual or too personal and that’s when Mitchell will make a phone call or arrange a meeting in person.
Because each client is different and all want access any time of the day, Mitchell puts BlackBerries in her employees’ hands as well.
“We are doing stuff on behalf of our clients and we want to be accessible whenever they need us because when a crisis hits, you can’t plan that and you have to be available,” Mitchell said. “And it’s not just for a crisis, but whenever they need us.”

Working Vacation
A potential pitfall with the technology is that some executives never really have any free time. With a BlackBerry attached to one hip and kids attached to the other, even family vacations can turn into work.
Brooks told of a recent trip to Disneyworld where she was able to knock out some details on a deal while standing in line for a ride. She said while others were sweaty and criticizing their kids, she was calmly trading and responding to messages.
“When you’re standing in line for 20 minutes at Space Mountain, what else is one to do?” Brooks said.
Still, the burden of never leaving home without her BlackBerry was rewarding upon her return to Fayetteville.
“I’ve never worked so hard on a vacation in all my life,” said Brooks, who refuses to use standard voice mail for fear of not returning messages in a timely manner. “But it was great because I came back and I didn’t have 800 e-mails to pine over or worry about or not be on top of.”
Several large organizations have attributed significant returns on investment to the use of mobile communication. Canadian firm Ipsos Reid, commissioned by Research in Motion, has research that suggests BlackBerry-equipped employees can save as many as 188 working hours a year.
Saving time is what the technology has done for most. One company president, who asked not to be quoted, said he spends half an hour responding to messages while he’s driving to work. Then when he gets to the office, he can start his day instead of wasting any more time trading messages.
Samples does the same thing, only from his recliner at home before he leaves for the office.
“I don’t know how we worked without them,” Samples said. “It’s great on sick days, weekend and nights, too. Everybody has to be available and instead of driving in from the house, they can deal with it in five minutes and it’s taken care of.”