` The information technology that helps us on our day to day lives has come a tremendous way from the beginning of developed business. The technology is inclusive of personal computers, cellular phones, intranet networks in the business environment, and global communications: all have been growing at a daily advancing rate from just 50 years ago. In the past communication inside a business building alone was so slow that today we wonder how any decisions or business plans were ever finished in a reasonable time frame. To illustrate, a typical business that wants to put into practice the company policy to stop using blue ink pens and only use black ink pens. There must first be a meeting of all the department heads; to do so the CEO would orally dictate a memo to his secretary that he wanted to hold such a meeting with a brief description of what the meeting would be about. I.e. “To: All Department heads” “Meeting in conference room at 9 am” Subject “pens”. This memo was then typed by the secretary and would be sent, by an office errand boy, to all the departments in the building by walking physically to each office and dropping it off to the secretary for that dept head to give to the Dept head manager. Now that Dept. head would then tell his secretary to reply to the original sent memo whether he would be able to attend the meeting or not, which would be hand delivered or the secretary would call the CEO’s secretary to confirm her dept heads attendance. If all Dept heads were able to attend then the meeting would go forward, but if too many were not able to, the original meeting would be cancelled and the issue of coordinating a common time would then try to be achieved. So, the meeting finally happens and the presentation from the CEO is given that he wants to change the color of ink they are using in their pens. From there is a discussion on the topic and analysis had to be done to determine the costs of black versus blue ink. The meeting would finish with a proposed follow-up meeting to analyze the data collected on costs. The CEO’s secretary who had been taking notes would type them all up and create a letter to all who attended the meeting of what they had discussed and the agreed time of the new meeting to come on the follow up. This letter then signed by the CEO, would be distributed by the errand boy to all the Heads again. This trend would continue from initial meeting to follow up meetings, to meetings of agreement to finally the policy in place meeting agreed upon date. Anytime during the process there was a delay in data gathering or absent members of attendance at the meetings would cause further delays in the process. So, if they were lucky if in about 1 month they would finally have their policy in place.
` Compared to the technology of today, we will take the same example of the CEO wanting to use black ink pens versus blue ink pens. The CEO has his secretary draft a word document on her company PC, that states the intended policy change and request are made for a cost analysis to be implemented and by whom; she forwards on the company intranet to the CEO’s company PC. He reads, confirms or corrects the document and has the secretary put it in an internal mail distribution for the company so instantly the Dept. Heads have the memo; they then open the email, read, the document and instantly respond with their thoughts on the subject, for or against, and the designated individual instantly researches on the internet the cost analysis and forwards that to all on the company email distribution list created from the original word doc sent. Now all dept heads can look over the material and approve or no the change in the selection of ink. This is all occurring in less than one business day. The only issues that can affect the timely consideration of the topic are attendance of all members and availability of the company PC or noticing the emails sent. The cell phone has taken care of that with access virtually anywhere.
` The efficiency factor for the IT industry has of course made its greatest improvements by merely cutting down on having to have meetings to get materials and discussions on topics out to all the personnel. The need to have a meeting for every decision is a thing of the past, the need to dictate and cover all material with redundant information that required letters to be typed and sent physically are also refined. The saving of paper alone offsets the cost of PC implementation in the office area and the immediate availability to contact everyone within the company’s intranet network is a tremendous saving in time and frustrated time spent trying to arrange a meeting. With the almost instant answer to any questions from CEO to direct Dept. Heads the business mechanism runs smoother, quicker, more efficiently with greater cost savings.
` So how can the technology be improved and what is in store for the future? The future will make it so everyone will be connected at all times via handheld devices such as a “Blackberry”.
` These new devices will work as your office on the go. To illustrate: when the employee reaches the office building immediately upon entering his handheld device is synchronized into the company’s intranet network enabling all calls (office numbers) and emails to be auto loaded via Wi-Fi connection. The handheld device still maintains the use of the employee’s personal phone number which is on an autodial network with his children’s school and home, plus global phone and network capabilities. While at work the employee will enter his office and place the handheld device into a synching cradle that automatically enables the device as the PC; the cradle is merely a memory and interface for the monitor; the keyboard and mouse is wireless as is the internet and intranet networks. So the memory of the handheld is quite large as it is virtually your traveling office complete with cell phone. The IBM development team is producing the IBM Web Sphere Portal which creates external facing web sites by a Wiki-connection that enables worldwide office accessibility. The PC is replaced and with a simple synch cradle which does an automatic back-up every time the device is put into it in order to save data in case of accidents. The employee can also have one of the synch cradles installed in his home that can be networked to his office, via the Web Sphere Portal, and with the Free-talk connection he can actually do his work from home and be connected to the office server with encrypted secure connections as seen at http://www.ibm.com/
` Communications Solutions is developing conference call solutions which will be developed to provide competitive business environments and organizations around the world to get the most for their meetings regardless where they are located by a worldwide network connection infrastructure. The handheld will be encrypted with a personal encryption key activated by a built-in thumbprint reader so only the employee will be able to unlock the information inside, so if it is lost the fear of lost information will be null as when the employee notifies the system administrator at work the handheld device is automatically deactivated and unable to be used by anyone. This makes the system secure. So the future goes from a staff of secretaries and typewriters, with landlines for communications to a simple handheld device that can be used worldwide. This creates the possibility that a company can have a staff of employees that work from their homes instead of having to have individual offices. The company building’s size can be greatly reduced and employees actually would only need to go there for personal HR meetings or system administration issues. This would free up the daily commutes to and from work, create more time to be with your families, and help to create a green environment as seen at http://www.alliancewireless.com/
References:
Alliance Wireless Connect-http://voip-phone-systems.tmcnet.com/topics/voip-phone-systems/articles/73396-freetalk-announces-formation-freetalk-connect-alliance-itexpo-east.html
IBM Redbooks® publications-http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/tips0760.html?Open
Communications Solutions- http://www.tmcnet.com/channels/conference-call
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