Professionals Say Companies Should Enable Today's Worker With Customized Integrated Technologies

Toronto, ON - A new national survey of 1,700 professional Canadians conducted by Ipsos Reid on behalf of Microsoft, reveals a near consensus within Canada's professional community that "employees are a company's biggest asset" (98%). And therefore most professionals believe that today's companies are compelled to provide their employees with integrated technologies that enable them to maximize their work-place performance:

• 98% agree that "by giving employees the right tools to increase their productivity, businesses can empower employees to reduce costs and increase revenue for their company" (66% strongly agree); and
• 97% agree that "by giving employees the right software, businesses can accelerate the return on their greatest investment - people" (56% strongly agree).

Professional Canadians recognize that today's work environment has changed over the past few years. Most agree that workers need to work in a more collaborative, team-oriented environment.

• Eighty-six percent of professionals agree that "working in teams is more important to business success today than it was five years ago"; and
• 72% say that the amount of time they spend collaborating with colleagues and clients has increased compared to five years ago --on average, professionals are spending 5 hours each day collaborating with colleagues and clients for work.

And three-quarters (73%) agree that "the work-place has evolved to the point where my job no longer happens just at my desk - I am expected to meet the needs of customers even when outside the office, or in transit to a meeting".

Further, majorities of professionals feel today's workers are increasingly being called upon to evaluate and decide strategic decisions for their companies (86%), and to be able to effectively communicate these decisions to their colleagues (79%). When asked to choose from a list of potential barriers which ones they believe are the biggest and most frustrating barriers to being productive and efficient at work, professionals point to a range of issues. Tops on the list is "lack of tools designed to help find what you need easily and quickly, when information resides in different data repositories across the company" (37%).

So, what kind of technologies do professionals feel will enable them to be more productive at work? Certainly there is a strong feeling that simply providing employees with a PC does not suffice, and that to be of real value an employee's desktop computer "must be an integrated office tool designed to help the employee using it to be more productive" (95%). When asked to choose from a list which thing they, or those like them, would want from their desktop office software, "ability to share documents within a common workspace"(45%) is rated highest, followed by the "ability to automatically create and update business processes, forms, reports and documents using the latest back-end IT system" (32%).

These are the findings of an Ipsos Reid poll conducted for Microsoft and fielded from March 17th to March 20th 2006. For the survey, a representative sample of 1760 adult "professional" Canadians were interviewed via an on-line survey vehicle. For the purposes of this study, professionals were defined as though Canadians who are employed in work environment where computer access and email are relevant and active components of their job.

The sample used in this study has been weighted according to Census data to accurately reflect the population of professional Canadians. With a sample of this size, the aggregate results are considered accurate to within 1772.3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, of what they would have been had this entire population been polled. The margin of error will be larger within each sub-grouping of the survey population.

Please open the attached PDF to view the factum and detailed tables.

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For more information on this news release, please contact:

Paul Orovan
Ipsos Reid Public Affairs
(416) 324-2900