Consumer tech creates headaches for IT chiefs

Employees increasingly expect corporate IT systems to match the sophistication of consumer technology

Slick consumer products have shifted staff expectations

Corporate IT systems are lagging behind consumer technologies in terms of usability, resulting in increased pressure on IT directors from end users eager to experience the same level of sophistication from business applications as they commonly enjoy at home.

That was the view of experts speaking at an industry roundtable last week, who claimed IT directors must invest in functionality that improves usability, such as desktop search, or risk growing end user frustration and diminishing productivity levels.

James Bennet, director of the technology, communications and entertainment group at auditing giant Ernst & Young, said many end users are unhappy with the productivity tools provided by their employers. He added that free tools such as Google Desktop often mean staff can locate documents on their home PC more easily than finding documents on their business PC or intranet. Similarly, the recent upgrade to Google's free Gmail service, offering users up to two gigabytes of storage, is putting the onus on enterprises to match these levels, he said.

Bennet argued that if IT directors are to help increase employee productivity and satisfaction they need to improve vanilla corporate systems by investing in both enterprise versions of consumer tools and upgraded user interfaces for business applications.

Gary Fry of Adobe, which organised the roundtable, said that despite tightening budgets IT directors can gain a strong return on investment from consumer-style technologies. "If [information] is presented in the right way... then that has a tremendous return on investment," he argued. "It doesn't matter what your profession is, the key to our industry is getting information in a usable, presentable fashion when somebody wants that."