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Businesses face a growing headache trying to provide technology that meets the needs of a diverse, multigenerational workforce, says IT services company EDS.
With tech-savvy Generation Y staffers beginning to exert their influence in a tight labour market, and a growing demand for flexible working hours and conditions, employers are under pressure to supply technology that enables staff to communicate effectively in and away from the office.
"You do have multiple generations of workers wanting different things," says EDS New Zealand managing director Steve Murray.
"If you can't supply some of those things - [such as] the seamless integration of technology - then people are incredibly transient and they will go somewhere where they perceive they will get the benefits or the technology they think they need to enhance their work day."
EDS hopes to turn the problem into a business opportunity. It has set up a demonstration suite in its Wellington office to show potential clients how unified communications - the linking of fixed and mobile phones, voicemail, email and instant messaging - can boost productivity and benefit staff.
Visitors are ushered through a Doctor Who Tardis phone box into "the office of the future" where demonstrations include a home worker video-conferencing and collaborating on a document with colleagues back at the office, a mobile manager picking up voicemail through email on his laptop and a visiting branch office worker using a communal workstation to access a personal desktop and files.
The technology, based mainly on Microsoft software, is not proprietary to EDS but Murray hopes moving into the unified communications business will help to attract new customers and boost EDS' market share.
Although EDS' New Zealand customers include Government departments, Telecom and Fonterra, it has found itself in a niche focused on serving ageing or "legacy" IT systems.
Showcasing the potential of unified communications opened clients' eyes to ways to improve their business, he said. "We're showing people what is possible."
Although a significant number of IT vendors sell, install and manage unified communications systems, Murray said he did not believe the market was too crowded. EDS' "point of differentiation" was its ability to bring the various technologies together effectively, he said.
One of the key productivity benefits for businesses using a unified communications system is "presence" information which constantly updates and displays the availability of each staff member on the network and what phone or other device (if any) they can be reached on.
This saves the age-old office frustration of playing telephone tag with colleagues.
Microsoft is making a major play to capture a larger share of the unified communications market and starts selling its latest suite of products - the same ones EDS is now demonstrating - on the local market in three weeks.
