Does Microsoft Office 2007 actually reduce productivity?

03/12/2009

I use Microsoft office 2003 professional for business running on XP but for home use we have a student version of 2007, purely so my son is working on the new platform to align with what is being used for school, writes David Winders in December’s LeasingWorld magazine. 

Last evening I had to use the home machine to do a domestic task, printing some photos, and was starting to play around with the new version. What I found stunning was the fact that nearly everything has moved into different places, menu structures and the like. Most of the functionality seems to be similar but "prettied up" in a icon-driven manner. Finding where familiar old things had moved to was a nightmare and, to me, somewhat frustrating.

What struck me was the productivity impact on business users because my own speed of doing things was dramatically reduced due to trying to work out where everything had gone. If this was deployed in a customer services division of 500 people the short-term effect of productivity and customer service coupled with the cost of retraining staff could be considerable; all in pursuit of . . . what exactly?

Larger businesses seem to run many years behind the consumer, probably two sets of upgrades old, so I wonder when MS Office 2007 will hit the business sector, and what effect it will have. Perhaps by that time home users will already be using 2007 and therefore staff will not see it as a big change?

Many financial service organisations, frighteningly, run critical business processes using a mass of unsupported spreadsheets and Access database applications. The consequence of a major Office suite change could present some substantial operational risks.

Software providers tell us all the time that they focus on productivity but here we seem to have a strange reversal. Although we can do little about a software release like MS Office, we can learn from the experience by transferring the lesson to the implementation of more industry-specific technology. The MS Office situation emphasises the knock-on consequences of deploying a technological solution. Systems are often designed by people who enjoy technology for technology’s sake, and then applications are introduced into a business model where process and people are also important, or in many cases much more important. The correct approach should be to consider the impact of your technological change beyond the software itself. In reality many IT professionals still continue to miss this valuable point, and just implement.

Beyond the productivity and risk issues are the cost elements, as buying a new commercial version of Office Professional, plus a laptop capable of driving it, is the best part of £1000. Translate this to a typical financial services organisation, and the costs of upgrading the hardware and software are very large. The environmental issue of filling up yet another skip or two with redundant computer equipment also seems not that clever.

How much real value do we all get from this so called progress? Some would say “not a lot”. For the asset finance sector there are additional issues: firstly the downside consequence on residual values of computer equipment, and the ongoing impact on operating lease profitability, and secondly the upside opportunity of new business through the upgrade and change out of a whole population of personal computers. 

My own decision is when do I upgrade? Most of my clients are still running 2003 or even Windows NT or Office 2000 so from that point of view, not just yet. However as I train in colleges as well as operate commercially, my own skills are now effectively behind the times. I always considered myself a "super-user" of office applications but the experience of the first use of 2007 made me think again.

There is obviously a bit of a learning curve here and the prospect of spending considerable time working through tutorials and books to re-build my super-user status is a little galling when there are more lucrative things to be doing. Thanks Bill.

 

 

 

 

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