IT's Impact on Business Performance
IT Customer Surveys/IT User Surveys Provide Answers

IT Customer Satisfaction Surveys/IT User Satisfaction Surveys
Assess IT's Impact on Employees and Customers

We're not sure that c-suite executives fully understand the impact IT has on their employees, customers and bottom-line performance.

Questions About IT Performance the C-Suite Should be Asking

1. How is IT impacting our employees, customers and company performance?
2. Are we getting value for the money we are spending on IT?
3. How can we get more value for our IT dollars?
4. Do we need to spend more on IT?
5. What areas of IT need improved performance?
6. How can we make IT's performance more effective and efficient?
7. How can IT make our employees more productive, our customers more satisfied and loyal, and our company more competitive and profitable?

Illustrative Comments from IT Customer Surveys/IT User Surveys

• I waste at least an hour a day waiting on my PC to do something. I am not alone with this - it is across the site. It scares me to think of the lost productivity and what that is costing us.
• People are very willing to work at home and complete additional hours, if they have access to a Laptop. Others can do so with a Blackberry. It may be false economy to limit these so much, and actually reduce productivity overall
• My PC is way too slow - if I had a decent IT platform to work with I would get a hell of a lot more work done in the same time. Manage2000 is a joke - it was long past its use by date and needs replacing. It is holding us back.
• JDE is a very user unfriendly program and is not an improvement over the old ICAPS system at all. It is complicated, difficult to use and takes an inordinately long time to get any information out of it; if you can retrieve it at all. The fact that our site was literally dumped in it at the deep end with no back up from the legacy systems and insufficient training was appalling and the business suffered because of it. Very poorly done.
• Trackwise is one of the worst programs I've ever seen, surpassed only by JDE for user unfriendliness. It's a complete waste of time and most people - myself included - just ignore it.
• I do not understand why our company will not allow sales employees that are out of the office the majority of the time to access their email via their private blackberry. This is not company owned property because _____ does not provide blackberrys, even for tenured major account reps. So, we are forced to buy our own and then _____ won't allow us to fully utilize this essential tool in today's business world. STUPID MANAGEMENT!!!
• I haven't worked with such a slow IT system in 20 years. I waste at least an hour a day waiting for screens to change. I hate to think if this is the same for everyone what this is costing the business in lost productivity.
• In our office there are only two network printing options which are undersized for the office usage and are frequently down due to print quality issues. I often have to outsource (at my own cost) printing a customer proposal to a local print shop in order to provide a good quality printed proposal.
• The state of the company network is ridiculous. I experience extremely slow network speeds 2-4 days every week. I often cannot download company information because it will tie up my computer for longer than 15-20 minutes. Sending and receiving email is often impossible, Lotus Notes just shuts down. Frequently the network connection is so bad I can't even use the internet, the browser times out. I cannot be productive when my most important tool doesn't work.
• Slow, unresponsive periods when it is inaccessible and takes forever to navigate from one e-mail to another.
• Marty is always available to help out, however, he is beyond swamped with trying to support a growing organization. We need more Marty's on our business!
• Our IT department operates with low sense of urgency regarding IT challenges that I have been faced with.
• If John is not available we all suffer. Our life line is our laptops!
• I get answers and resolution to easy questions immediately. For that I am very satisfied. Answers or resolution to bigger, long standing issues take much longer... some are yet to be resolved. Major issues. I don't think that this is a function of the technicians. They don't seem to have the authority to make decisions or implement changes. They can only do what they are directed to do, so I am very dissatisfied.
• We have chronic issues - one or two computers are always crashed - feels like everyone has two or three days of no productivity when being resolved
• When I give an order to my admin, I never know how long it will take to get it in oracle because there is so much red tape. Every month the system changes and it's ridiculous.
• Issues can drag on for weeks, and without my continual follow up, it feels like little progress is made on issues.
• I have experienced loss of key files during several IT issues.
• Larger issues have gone unresolved for years. It is a cross platform tech support issue. Our technician does not have the expertise with the Mac OS platform, therefore his ability to help with certain issues is limited. We use Apple support when we can but the bigger issue is server and cross platform related.
• It's frustrating when we have to mail in our laptop. The down time is tremendous.....in our world we can't even afford a few days without a laptop and the internet alternative site is not an optional solution.
• Always seems to take multiple tries to resolve issues.
• My PC is very slow.....
• Very slow startup. wastes 10 minutes a morning
• Many of us would be better served with upgraded smart phones
• The printers are often down/jammed.
• Look into better types of laptops to support the field. We are putting together large spreadsheets, large presentations, etc. all the time, and having our PCs crash and losing work is inefficient. Is there a better laptop out there to support this type of company and the work we do?
• The issue is not the support but the limitations IT management puts on lawyers--absent abuse lawyers need access to many applications and hardware that it is reluctant to give. A lawyer especially a partner is entitled to more courtesy and trust. Just one example is the blackberry issue -- if I tell you it's dead believe me --do not quote policy at me about cost of a new blackberry. My lost productivity will pay for 100 blackberries or more.
• Every time I have had to contact tech support it takes hours (if not days) for someone to address the problem...
• We are a copier company! Our copiers in the office do not work. We have features on our copiers that no one in the office knows how to use.
• approximately half the experiences have been handled with a rude individual who seems put out. very condescending attitude.
• The first comment from Tech Support always is the user did something wrong. In addition, they take forever - weeks - sometimes never - getting back on any issue that needs follow up. There is no system to make sure there is follow up where needed. In addition, if the problem has to go to systems, the people in that department decide what they are going to address and what they won't, are totally unresponsive, and don't even follow up with the Technical Support.
• If the problem is too difficult it tends to get swept under the rug. People work on it initially, but when it seems too hard they give up and ignore the problem, without satisfactory resolution (i.e., either problem solved or we can't fix it).
• Once we reach a technical support individual they are too often unable to assist with the problem, exhibit minimal skill sets and knowledge of our systems, or give conflicting answers. In my opinion, our technical personnel are below average in the industry. I am certain they are hindered by the inadequacies of our systems, but they are also separate and apart from systems concerns.
• Escalated problems take too long to be resolved
• Ever since we switched over to File Site, Outlook does not automatically fill-in my e-mail addresses when I start typing. I waste an incredible amount of time re-typing e-mail addresses each day.
• The system is incredibly slow. My computer freezes up at least once or twice a day doing routine tasks. I suspect that we are trying to do too much for the CPU's resources.
• Sometimes the computer or the internet just don't work or they get really slow and start to freeze. These slow periods, in which you can do almost nothing on your computer, sometimes last as long as 45 minutes. It is really frustrating and results in clients being billed for more than they should.
• Remote access is awful - Citrix kicks me out all the time, causing delays and, on multiple occasions, lost work product that could not be recovered.
• I have never seen such a disfunctional set of network and computer systems as ours. The frequency with which servers, programs, and overall systems go down for repair, reboot and servicing is ridiculous. When the programs are up and running the frequently crash on individual PC's because of inadequacies in our systems.
• The only thing worse than our systems during hours, is those systems after hours. The use of Citrix is barely better than no access at all, frequently results in the loss of critical documents and fails to incorporate key functionalities and software.
• NETWORK SPEED IS THE NUMBER 1 ISSUE. IT MUST BE ADDRESSED ASAP. In addition, will we ever get an up to date version of Word and Outlook? 2003? I often receive documents that I cannot open because the sender is using the most modern version of Word.
• The laptops I check out are generally disfunctional. I was on a flight to CA and, when I turned on my laptop, I found that the fully-charged life of my battery was 20 minutes. This is unacceptable. I have also had lots of other problems with laptops. (I should note that these problems are not due to the IT staff but to equipment issues.) Based on my experience, it appears that all of our laptops are five or more years old. We should consider leasing new laptops and replacing them every year (or, better yet, following our competitors and issuing laptops to every lawyer who wants one).
• I am dissatisfied with my Blackberry. The ones I have received have been two model years out of date or refurbished and problematic. I have become so dissatisfied, that I use my personal iPhone for checking my email. But this is not a good solution because the firm does not support iPhones and it does not help me pay for my data plan.
• My desktop is a problem. It is very slow and, when I have too many programs open, it makes a jet-engine-like sound. I have problems running WestLaw Next and other flash-based programs. I believe that the processor in my desktop (P4), is nearly a decade old.
• Overall, there is a feeling of throwing fixes over the wall. IT needs to work more closely with end users to understand the issues and listen to the end user. We have received answers in the past to the effect that just load and it can fixed later if it is wrong. The other answer we run into is that "its fixed" without any explanation of what went wrong, why it went wrong or how it was fixed. That is not the way to go - most of us don't have time to do our jobs once, let alone twice.
• Answer the phone or get back to people on a timely basis. Emails go completely ignored.
• I had to wait until my Blackberry actually stopped working when I was traveling for business in order to get a new one. It didn't matter to the firm that my previous Blackberry was so old that I couldn't open the majority of the attachments that I needed to open such that I could do my job while on business travel. I was constantly calling my secretary to ask me to read me documents or to open items for me. This was all because the two year period had not passed before I was entitled to a new one. I understand the need for a policy, but exceptions to the policy need to be permitted.
• This is the worst--my Blackberry is battered and being nursed by updates I make--but I am not due for a replacement so tough on me--rank stupidity and arrogance.
• Fix organization between Oracle and other systems used for customers address/billing. I believe a new system would do wonders for keeping customers happy and minimizing returns and addressing issues.