Vietnamese Enterprises Lack Experience in Using Productivity Management Measures

The survey and information collection have been carried out since February 2014. Over 2 months, the survey collected opinions from 180 top executives of enterprises from various fields in Vietnam like production, retail distribution, fast moving consumer goods, energies, pharmacy, finance and banking. 75 percent of them are foreign enterprises and 25 percent domestic ones. Surveyed enterprises possess capital from US$10 to US$500,000 billion with 100 to 5,000 employees. One of the most noticeable findings in the report is that 43 percent of the enterprises do not believe in the quality of obtained productivity management information; 55 percent are still using Microsoft Excel as a main measure to manage productivity; 40 percent shared that: constructed Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are not suitable with their strategies, or KPIs are not consistent, only several KPIs are built for some parts of enterprise, KPIs are constructed but in lack of their examination and management, or even no KPI is constructed at all.

 

The report concentrates on major issues like the situation of using indexes (KPI) to manage productivity in enterprises, report and decision making system, measures to manage activities in enterprises, time that top executives are spending on enterprise management, priorities and concentration on productivity management, comparison of productivity management among industries and sectors. The report emphasizes that appropriate productivity management will greatly support executives in making decisions. Nearly 70 percent of executives reported satisfaction in their current business productivity management systems, however, when making decisions, only 57 percent of them use data in management reports that they obtain.

 

For the last 2 years, maybe due to market difficulties, CEL realizes that there has been a positive change in making decisions based on factual data. This change has promoted enterprises’ demand for more data on business productivity. In the world, the management and decision making based on factual data appeared about 5 years ago.

 

Moreover, the report also reveals that despite IT progress, top executives in enterprises still use a lot of time collecting and analysing information to understand and catch up with business situation and elaborate proper strategies. On average, top executives spend nearly one working day per week on these activities. Especially, for top executives in Vietnamese’ enterprises with revenues of under US$100 million, they spend 1.5 days per week (or 3-4 months per year!) to collect data and prepare reports. They are also the least confident people when making decisions and are less satisfied with productivity management systems in their enterprises. This time consuming process reduces remarkably their effectiveness, delays important decisions and increases risk level.

 

Also according to the report, 40 percent of enterprises share that constructed KPIs are not suitable with their strategies, or KPIs are not consistent, only several KPIs are built for some parts of enterprise, KPIs are constructed but in lack of their examination and management, or even no KPI is constructed at all.

 

However, the report of CEL Consulting points out that modern management technology does not help enterprises if data is not correct, irrelevant or not updated. If enterprises do not elaborate effective internal activity processes, enterprise productivity managing only consumes management time, or even leads to making wrong decisions. More remarkably, although management software like ERP has become more popular, Microsoft Excel is still the most used software among productivity management measures.

 

According to Mr Arvind Sabwarhal, Project Director of CEL Consulting, Vietnamese enterprises seem not to possess much experience in using modern productivity management measures, which leads to lack of confidence in making decisions. Executives will make decisions much more effectively and easily if they are provided with relevant, standardised and updated information.