Is innovation the answer to solving the UK's productivity paradox?

London Tech Week blog from Exclaimer

The UK's rich history of technological progress places it in a prime position to lead the charge towards enhanced productivity. In 2022, rapid-growth UK tech ventures secured an impressive £24 billion in funding, surpassing both France and Germany. Despite this, the UK encounters challenges in converting these advancements into tangible productivity gains, resulting in stagnant productivity growth year after year.

The issue at hand is multifaceted, with various factors contributing to the disparity. Legacy systems, entrenched work practices, and low digital literacy in the workforce all play their part.

Putting the customer first

The SaaS industry holds the power to transform not just quantitatively, but qualitatively too. It boosts scale, efficiency, and output quality. It's not about whether tech can boost productivity, but how it can do it effectively. The secret? Putting the customer first.

This goes beyond creating impactful products. For enhanced productivity, it's crucial to consider our products within a broader, interconnected context to streamline and enhance workflows. This underscores the significance of integrations. Notably, automation has hugely enhanced job roles for 90% of knowledge workers and boosted productivity for 66% of them.

But developing an outstanding user experience transcends functionality. It involves understanding users' diverse needs and behaviors, allowing us to craft products that seamlessly integrate into their lives. By removing obstacles from our tools, we create room for innovation and productivity to flourish in a realm of time and space.

The emphasis on product design, implementation, and support is at the core of our operations. Our journey in delivering email signature management software is a prime illustration of this commitment. By focusing on key aspects crucial to our users—ranging from time management to workflow optimization and improved communication—our efforts have significantly boosted the productivity of the teams we cater to.

Invest in educating your customers

Investing in robust customer support, training, and marketing initiatives isn't just a nice-to-have. They form the foundation of a strategy aimed at fostering loyalty. The goal is to make your users rely on your product every day. Beyond the business benefits - boosting customer advocacy and reducing churn - it also ensures that your solution actively enhances the productivity of its users.

The concept of customer support isn't groundbreaking, but it's often overlooked, especially in terms of productivity. By focusing on the customer experience and continuously improving our product's usefulness, we've noticed a direct link between customer satisfaction and productivity. This lesson goes beyond our industry - the more value your product brings to users' lives, the more productive they become while using it.

Elevating digital literacy to a board issue

New tools and platforms aren’t just assets to be deployed but skills to be mastered. The pivot towards proficiency in managing digital tools has shifted from a niche requirement to a mainstream necessity impacting all facets of an organization.

The need for companies to have a digitally literate workforce is crucial for enhancing productivity and staying competitive. Analysis by Lloyds Bank's points to a £85bn productivity gap in SMEs due to digital literacy shortages. Consequently, digital literacy has transitioned from an HR concern to a critical board-level issue. Ongoing efforts are focused on equipping employees with the essential skills to harness technology fully.

Redefining our approach

The transition towards customer-centric innovation, combined with a dedicated focus on digital literacy, isn't just a strategy confined to tech firms. It's a roadmap to advancement and productivity across the UK and beyond. Reimagining our strategy towards innovation and growth needs a combined effort from all sectors, ranging from agile startups to established corporations, and from the SaaS industry to the broader economy. Only then can we fully resolve this paradox and achieve the productivity we’re capable of.

Author: Vicky Wills, Chief Technology Officer, Exclaimer

techUK and TechSkills at London Tech Week

techUK is proud to once again be a strategic partner of London Tech Week. The event is a fantastic showcase for UK tech, and we’re pleased that techUK members and colleagues are represented on the agenda.

We are pleased to be working with 20 techUK members at London Tech Week to highlight the positive impact of the tech industry in the UK.

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