PRESS RELEASE – TWO local companies recently benefited for a productivity measuring exercise organized by the National Competitiveness and Productivity Council. The companies got to find out how productivity their enterprise has been over the past five years and the necessary steps to increase their productivity.
Productivity measures how efficiently production inputs such as labor and capital are used to produce a given level of output. Thus productivity is considered a key source of economic growth and competitiveness and serves as statistical information for many international comparisons and country performance assessments.
The National Competitiveness and Productivity Council (NCPC)was established to identify key issues related to competitiveness and productivity in St. Lucia while providing timely recommendations to policy makers, the private sector and other stakeholders.
During the recent testing of its innovative productivity measuring tool with two service providers, Fiona Hinkson, Director of the NCPC said “One of the mandates of the NCPC is to measure productivity.”
“And we realize that firms within the private sector are having difficulty in measuring productivity so the NCPC designed a productivity tool named Protool to assist firms in measuring their productivity.
“Today we actually had a testing exercise. We did the testing last year with manufacturing firms; this time around we are doing the testing with services firms in order to test the tool using their data for us to see how we can improve that tool.”
Hinkson touted that the Protool can be a vital measuring instrument for all areas within the business sector concerned with productivity. She said the near future of the Protool is greater accessibility as an online application on the NCPC’s website.
“This tool is not just a quantitative tool, it is also qualitative. Firms will be able to answer questions like leadership capability and management; they will be able to answer questions on their business processes, their sales and marketing. Look at what is happening within their firms in terms of innovation and they would be able to get the results from that tool as well as the tool will be able to provide them with recommendations on how they can improve their business processes as well as how they can improve in enhancing productivity within their firm.”
The two businesses which participated in the testing programme were Cox and Company Ltd. and Phone Bay Inc and they had high praise for the quality of the Protool’s processes and final report. Chris Dahoma, Managing Director of Phone Bay and Peter Lorde from Cox and Company shared their views on the Protool.
(Peter Lorde) “I think it’s a great idea, it’s a step in the right direction. It encourages business to go evidence based in terms of determining where they are at. I also think it adds to the old adage that ‘If you can’t measure you can’t manage,’ and it encourages management by the numbers.”
(Chris Dahoma) “The tool goes more in depth. It makes you aware that there is more you can do in the company to get the figures that you want instead of going the normal orthodox way. So it would pinpoint things that you might have been aware of or it might bring up things that you never knew existed. You can implement them in your business and you work on them and you will get better results.”
The participants also seized the opportunity to make recommendations to enhance certain aspects of the Protool. (NCPC)