Scoffers justified in 1980s Productivity studies conducted in the 1980s were quick to point out the shortcomings of the computer age. That attitude is changing because of a cultural shift in the way computers are used. The popularity of the World Wide Web and its amazing ability to link people so they can gather and distribute information has created a new, disruptive brand of technology that is changing many of the assumptions about how to use computers at work. The Internet and the Web shake things up. Communications have been changed by e-mail and instantaneous document transfers, including sparkling graphics.
Powerful networks allow business meetings in which the participants are on separate continents.
Like the Houstonian, the goal at Sysco is to reap its own productivity gains from its new online service. The eSysco system is still being tested, but it could potentially liberate the sales force from its old status as order takers. I can meet new clients and introduce new products to the clients we already have. The benefits for Sysco don't stop there. Because the eSysco orders are automatically a part of the company's information network, they sprint through the system much faster than the old days, when the salesman took the order by phone, created a batch of paper orders that were then bundled off for processing.