InformationWeek

Examples of business changes are the elimination of patients' preauthorization process for hospitalization, as well as the dismissal of the referral process that had been needed for patients to use specialist services. Eliminating those two processes has saved the company "tens of millions of dollars annually," LeFort says.

At the same time, IT improvements have helped UnitedHealth customer-service people become more productive while enhancing the quality of customer services. For instance, a new call-tracking system keeps a history of why an individual called UnitedHealth, reducing the time needed for customer representatives to familiarize themselves with the backgrounds of customer inquiries and problems. A voice-response processing system also cuts customer-service calls, LeFort says. While the volume of UnitedHealth's business is growing 15% to 20% annually, the need to add new employees to service these customers has dropped, he says.

InformationWeek Research found that vestiges of business reengineering remain in force. Three in five executives say that some of the their companies' most-effective nontechnology efforts to boost worker productivity have entailed process improvements that eliminate jobs. An equal number of respondents admit to laying off unproductive employees.

Over the last 10 years, KIAH Inc., a financial-services firm in Stockton, Calif., has deployed mortgage-processing software that's let the company cut overhead as well as improve customer services. The software has reduced the mortgage application approval process for KIAH customers from four days to 10 minutes, says Thomas Kennedy, CEO and chairman of KIAH. Before getting the software, KIAH needed six mortgage processing people to do a job that's now done by just one person. "If you can eliminate a half-dozen people and still get more work done, that's an incredible productivity improvement," says Kennedy. "The payback from that IT investment is huge."

The key technologies that help boost worker productivity, according to survey respondents, include collaborative software tools (95%), upgrading PCs with newer models (91%), boosting network bandwidth performance (84%), and several mobile computing options, such as new notebook computers (76%) and wireless devices (65%). At the same time, more than four in five executives surveyed say that breaking down the barriers between various business functions has improved their companies' productivity. It's not surprising, then, that collaborative technologies such as E-mail and intranets are highly supportive of this effort.

General Electric's companywide, global intranet gets 11 million hits a day. That includes employees (and ex-employees) who go online to see their personal benefits summaries, as well as to make a range of transactions, such as moving savings into money market accounts. Intranet Webcasting also serves as a platform for self-paced training, reducing the need for travel. GE's virtual private network also lets employees work remotely as though they were in GE offices, enabling many to bypass morning and evening commutes.

Using Web-based product data-management applications, GE project teams "follow the sun," enabling engineers across different time zones to work collaboratively, ultimately reducing development time. Meanwhile, instant messaging technology lets GE employees check in real-time which colleagues are online (or at their desks), eliminating the guessing game of phone tag.

IT deployments have eliminated manual procedures and paperwork, reduced the time it takes to accomplish tasks, and helped GE employees more efficiently access and share information, says Larry Biagini, GE's chief technology officer of corporate initiatives. "IT is helping us to be faster, more energized, more global, and more customer-centered," Biagini says. "It means less wasted time pushing around papers and more time spent focusing on the customer." In recent months, the company has launched a range of enhanced communication tools "to keep employees informed and to put the latest news at their fingertips," he says. "The end result is a more productive and profitable workplace."

At Prudential, the ability for agents to access coverage, customer, and company information from mobile notebooks has eliminated the need for the insurer to print and distribute millions of pages of documents annually. It has also freed Prudential agents to spend more face-to-face time with customers, ultimately allowing Prudential to service--and sign--more customers, says VP of field technology Christine Ludwig. "Technology has been an aid for our agents to do their jobs better and for them to save a great deal of time," she says. The time savings "creates more sales opportunities, more cross-selling," which improves Prudential's revenue as well as the livelihood of the agents themselves. "Agents aren't paid unless they're out there with clients."

Western Surety, a part of CNA Insurance, has been able to maintain the same employee level in its surety bond business as it had in 1991, even though the company's business has doubled. Western Surety CIO Bob Fullenkamp says the company has been able to achieve this increased productivity through a reengineering effort supported by a workflow and imaging system from JetForm Corp. that cuts the paperwork and time involved in customers' purchasing Western Surety bonds. Down the line, the company will roll out E-commerce applications that will let customers do more transactions over the Web by themselves, as well as let agents get their customers' policies underwritten by Western Surety quicker.

What's the upshot of all this improved productivity? For the companies winning at output gains, the payoff is quite impressive. More new ideas, higher gross revenue, and increased customer satisfaction top the list of achievements. For workers, the productivity success is a mixed blessing. They're enjoying higher base salaries, enhanced promotional opportunities, and more bonuses--but at a cost. At more than three-quarters of the companies surveyed, staff jobs have never been so demanding despite widespread productivity gains.

At Duramet, its new inventory-management system has helped the company double sales over the last three years--without needing to hire more salespeople, says controller Joe Butler Jr. "Our salespeople no longer have to spend a lot of time making phone calls to check whether we have specific inventory available to sell to customers," he says--the inventory-management system eliminates extra work and at the same time improves customer service. In the past, Duramet salespeople looked at printed reports to check the status of inventory. Those reports become obsolete quickly; the new computerized system gives salespeople real-time information, he says.

Improved customer service is a benefit of IT cited over and over again by companies. For example, at Chase Manhattan Corp., data mining applications have allowed the company's internal help desks--including the help desks that answer internal banking and procedural questions by Chase branch-office workers--to deal with inquiries faster. Those inquiries include frequently asked questions as well as unusual situations, such as the correct procedure for a teller to follow when a customer wants to close an account for a deceased person and has a death certificate from Brazil, says Walt Korduba, Chase's VP of services assurance center. Help-desk personnel are able to find the answers to the problems using a keyword search. This capability replaces previous hard-copy manuals, and lets Chase's help-desk workers frequently answer questions with one phone call, and within 20 seconds. The data-mining application has also helped Chase integrate and standardize procedures and policies related to Chase's mergers with Chemical Bank and Manufacturers Hanover, says Korduba.