How to increase revenue by $7,210 per employee

You need a vision, you need a plan, and you need information mobility.

After all, $7,210 per employee is not a small chunk of change. At a time when many businesses are looking for any way to slash costs and get on the right side of the balance sheet, it’s the sort of difference than can turn a bad year into a great one. And it’s the sort of difference that comes from information mobility.

Of course, $7,210 is oddly specific. How do you get to that number? Simple: you ask the top performers in business about the results they’ve seen from pursuing information mobility initiatives. In an IDC study conducted on behalf of Ricoh Americas, researchers found that companies with real information mobility earn, on average, $7,210 in revenue annually per employee and realize $16,027 per employee annually in increased productivity — a 42 percent jump.

So how can you increase revenue and make this work for your organization?

Don’t overlook search

Be honest. How much time do you spend looking for things at work?

Every second spent looking for a file or document is money wasted — so it would seem that having the ability to quickly find the information you’re looking for at any time should be a priority for every company. But it’s not always that easy, of course. Between investment costs, institutional barriers and other roadblocks, there are a lot of reasons that search isn’t prioritized in many company budgets.

Meanwhile, the companies that have invested in search boosted employee productivity by 9 percent, revenue went up 18 percent, operational costs fell by $30 million, and it cut the time spent on business processes by more than half. When you give workers the ability to access information quickly and efficiently, the results compound on themselves, as these top performers found out.

The lesson, of course, is that it might be time to rethink priorities.

Communication is key

It’s not just enough to go mobile and improve your access to information, though. You also need to communicate effectively to make the best possible business decisions with the information you have.

Collaboration technologies like local intranets, and portal technologies that act as gateways for workers to access the network, and for customers to easily access information, products and services, have proven to be strong revenue boosters. Between the two, collaboration technology enabled a 10 percent employee productivity boost within organizations, and dramatically drives down operational costs, as customers and workers are better able to get the answers and information they need.

Information mobility needs to be a commitment from the whole organization — both internally and externally.

Go mobile

This one should be a no-brainer. We’ve talked BYOD and mobility solutions already, but it’s worth reiterating — the benefits of mobility are many. The survey found that enabling tablets and smartphones in these companies boosted productivity by 13 percent per employee, and increased revenue by 12 percent. But more than that, enabling smartphones and tablets in an organization also managed to reduce operational costs by a whopping annual average of $1.7 million — three distinct benefits to your bottom line.

For more about how your company can go mobile, check out Greg Walters’ take on how to unleash the power of your workforce. And it never hurts to check out some productivity-boosting mobile apps.

Tie it all together

When it comes to adopting an information mobility strategy, it pays to take a holistic approach. Information mobility is something that permeates throughout your entire organization, so that your workers and customers have access to the information they need, whenever they need it. And while it may prove challenging at times, the example of these companies surveyed proves that the benefits of information mobility are well worth the time and effort.