ABSTRACT
This research paper will address the issue of how information technology has changed organizations and how work is generally done during this current time of changing information technology. Different ways of how work is done with the current technology at hand will be discussed so that complete differences can be observed from the past methods of working to the current methods which make great use of technology to monitor all sorts off work being done in the companies. It will be worth noting that times have really changed and so is the use of technology. Technology is been used by companies in doing almost every activity. The major aim of embracing technology in companies and organizations is to cut down the general costs of production since the number of employees will be reduced meaning the costs of production will also come down.
And since this is a competitive world, the most quality products which come to the consumer markets with pocket friendly prices are the products that will win the hearts of many consumers. It will be seen later in the research paper that it actually technology that has led to the emergence of many other business organizations and companies that are related to the use of technology. They are well known as the outsourcing companies. These are the kind of companies give out facilities and equipment to other companies for some payment. This in the end helps most production companies to cut down on their cost of producing their products. This has a general implication that products from such companies having low cost of production is cheaper thus getting more customers leading to gradual growth of the business. Therefore it will be concluded that though the advancement in technology has done very many good things especially to employers who have been helped a great deal in terms of management, it has also brought about many other problems. They way people used to manage business operations in the past is completely different from the way business operations are managed currently. That is managing any kind of business operation with the current technology is an easier and cheaper task.
Introduction
The advancement in information technology has really changed the way companies and organization work. Most of the companies in the past had a completely different organization of work and how everything was done within the companies. But since information technology has always been changing, so is the organization of work and how work is done in companies as a whole (Dennen, 2008).
Telecommuters Company has been in the TriNet group Inc for quite sometime. This particular group is well known for outsourcing human resource through out San Leandro in California. A large number of this company’s employees operate remotely. That is they are either operating away from their residential places or in some satellite offices, or all working from their laptops, this was according to the company’s network and also the manager of information security. For those companies that are starters, telecommuters will only make use of the equipment that the company owns for their work but they will not use their own computers claims Jack Gold who is the consultant of the RunzHeimer mobile technology. In that way, information technology will work to ensure that the equipment that are being used are loaded with a software for protecting it against any threats that may be brought about by virus together with other devices for protection.
At TriNet, all the laptops that are meant to be used at home are normally encrypted. This encryption is usually done by using softwares gotten from Beachhead solutions Inc which is located at Santa Clara in California. This particular software normally has the provision of centralizing the encryption management and destruction of the remote data in case the laptop is either stolen or lost.
Influence of information technology
Information technology has made it easy for most companies to be able to store lots of information privately and using the safest methods of storage. But still, there are those companies that still have not embraced the use of the new technology. These companies expose themselves to very huge risks in terms of how they store their data and vital information. This is so because in the recent past, there have been an ever growing number of computer security breaches that are mobile in the news. And it has been reported that the theft cases of laptops and there external drives has really increased among the employees in the department of Veteran Affairs, United States. These theft incidences normally comprise the personal data of very many people. Therefore the use of modern technology in companies ensures that the all the important data is stored safely in the network which can not be interfered with once it is properly protected.
Technology has really changed the way people work. It has made people to be working from there homes and this is the greatest privilege employees have to enjoy (James, 2005). This way of working has got very many advantages both to the employees and the employers but on the other hand it exposes the companies working this to a very serious security risk. And as a result of this, people have to be in agreement on policies and rules that will protect the employer from the risk. Other companies are usually ahead of others in terms of how they are using their technology in protecting their premises and organizations. Such companies are like the TriNet. And despite the new attacks on the network, onslaughts of virus, continuous loss of data and other serious hazards that can be introduced by remote users, many of the companies that are based in the United States have not been bothered by the establishment of security policies to be used by the telephone workers claims Runzheimer International Ltd., which is a Wis-based provider of the products for the mobility of the employee. It is claim by the technological consultant at Runzheimer that most of the problems that companies use to go through in terms of security of the stored information can be properly dealt with by using the modern office technology. It is suggested that for companies that have just started, the outsourcing company, telecommuters, should only make use of the equipment that is owned by the company for their work but not their own computers that are meant for home use. In this way, modern technology will work to ensure that all the equipment are loaded with softwares for protecting them against virus attack, this softwares will be used together with other control devices. By continuously standardizing the operating system and application versions, information technology will also be able to manage virus updates centrally (Jay, 2005). Companies should not at any time rely on the community to take care of their equipment because this will land the company in many other problems.
In most companies like the TriNet, their telecommuters normally use laptops that are centrally managed and this normally gives the company the authority to make sure that the policies are enforced because the company owns the machines and equipment and eventually this reduces the heavy workload on the people supporting the company. Many companies use different methods of ensuring that information stored is secure. Since viruses have the ability of causing disruptions to the bandwidth hat lies on the corporate network, information technology specialists have also come up with the idea of installing Safe Access, and this is a special appliance gotten from a Colo-based Still Secure. This appliance ensures that user equipment have been updated by the virus protection software. In many cases, productivity in the office has been severely interrupted due to the attack of viruses and by making use of the virus protection softwares that modern technology has presented as with is one of the many ways of ensuring that productivity in the office is not interfered with.
The use of the Safe Access appliances has also enabled many companies using it to be able to tell when virus scanning was last performed by home workers on their equipment. This eliminates the need of having a supervisor to keep on monitoring home workers if they scan the computers or not. Another new way that technology has changed mode of working is by using the TriNet’s policy of not storing their corporate data for longer periods in their laptops. The telecommuters are therefore expected to be saving the work that they have done on the network home folders which are normally backed up properly. The telecommuters are also highly discouraged from using thumb drives and USBs simply because they can easily be stolen or even lost. In the past, employees of most companies only worked from their offices that were normally based within the company’s premises and only saved their work on numerous files cabinet, but as it can be seen technology has really changed everything (Crosman, 2008).
But in cases where the network is not consistent, the employees will be expected to store their work on the laptop. The information that will be stored on the laptops by employees will only be there for a shorter time but once the network becomes functional again, the information will be quickly moved to the network. Technology has made people, especially employers to believe that data that resides in the corporate repositories that are centralized is the safest data and therefore in any other information that needs to be safe has to be saved there. And this information stored in the corporate repositories that have centralized should also be accessed by the telecommuters in case they would wish to make corrections on the information that they had stored earlier on and this should be done from a distance or places of the employee’s choice.
This advanced technology has also made companies to believe that it is best if the home PC is run as a virtual machine that is encrypted at the same time. This will be situation where workers or users will have to log in so as the company’s image may be brought up. This is can only be possible by using sophisticated softwares such as the Cisco systems which normally secures the company’s desktop and many others. This has been highly embraced by the TriNet Company where all of there home laptops have been encrypted using softwares gotten fro Beachhead Solutions Inc. which is based in California. The softwares that TriNet uses provides the kind of encryption that is centrally managed and the remote data will be destructed if the laptop will be stolen or even lost. In most cases where the technology advances so quickly and companies embrace the technology; the employees of that particular company will have to undergo some kind of training on the basic use of the technology before they are left to use the technology (Mamaghani, 2006).
Most companies have now embarked on the telework technology so that the way work is done in the company may change to a better way. Most of the organizations that are federal do have the required elements of infrastructure of information technology already in place. But these elements are limited in terms of the kind of support they give to teleworks. But when this is improved, the companies having this will be having better strategies of information technology support for the entire telework network. Technological advancement has made organizations to more often include telework considerations in initiatives of technological enhancement which will in future benefit the company in the most positive way possible.
And as a result of this advancement in technology, many companies have that enterprise wide approach to implementing support for telework operation which ensures the complete success and value of all telework operations. This enables companies to experience value and success in such a way that all the benefits are maximized and there will be realization of the investment returns. Such is achieved if proper enterprise architecture and planning has been done using the available technology. The benefits that most companies are realizing now are as a result of having a complete technological infrastructure that is well networked and had been properly planned which ensured proper allocation of resources (Brandel, 2007).
Technological advancement has made of the companies to develop new roles which have really the organization of work and how the should be done. For instance, Apple which is a well known consumer technological company, it has been very able in the recent past to develop only those softwares that many people make use of. Through the production of such products, the company has been able to create more partnerships on the hand which will enable the company to manufacture even better softwares for consumer consumption which will eventually change the way the company will be organized in such a way that more of the management will be done by using the new technology that is capable of watching over a large number of employees in different locations of the company effectively (Brian, 2008). The most advantageous thing is that with the technology in place, many companies have now become 24 hour operators so as to reach an even wider consumer base. But this also comes with a price that is companies such as the Apple Company will have to invest in installation of additional infrastructure to support the operation. It is therefore worth noting once a particular company decides to embrace the new technology; the company must also be ready to meet extra expenses related to installation of infrastructure of the information technology. Companies in the past were normally not bothered by meeting these extra expenses because the rate at which technology was advancing was very slow. Therefore technology has really changed many aspects of work as far as time is concerned.
Information technology led to the crucial advancement in the business world that changed every aspect of organization. It is well known as outsourcing. There are major players in the outsourcing business and are well spread through out the globe. Most of these outsourcing companies are found in the Asian Continent and they normally serve the large employers situated at the West, some are Chinese and other institutions that need to open up their business opportunities in the world of information technology (Caplen, 2008). These major outsourcing companies have always been moving from being simple outsourcers to companies that serve to re-engineer different process in business. Normally these outsourcing companies make good use of the current technology manage their businesses properly.
This kind of technological advancement is further advancing at a speedy rate and the owners or rather the people running this outsourcing business do face a major challenge in those times when problems occur in the technological field. Technology has enabled many companies to be flexible in most the things that they do (Anonymous, 2008.).
Organization performance
The state-of-the-art information technology can really assist the way organizations work and information technology really improves the service delivery of these organization and companies. Most companies that quickly adopted the new technologies into their systems are performing pretty well and their service delivery is up to date (Anonymous, 2008). This has worked to ensure that these companies have acquired many other customers leading to a broader customer base. Generally, surveys have proven that companies with improved technology do have better quality in terms of goods and services that they produce.
Conclusion
Information technology has really influenced the way business is done in the current world. A lot of things are managed by just through the use of the current technology. Though this technology has really helped employers in such a way that costs of production have been cut down, it has however brought many other problems on the side. Many viruses have emerged for to disable the equipment that is used by the different administration. Also many people have ended up losing their jobs simply because machines can perform more effectively than human beings. It is therefore agreed upon that if an organization or a company wants to employ the use of the technological advancement in place, it must be ready to meet the extra expenses that come along with the technology. Such expenses include expenses for installation of technological infrastructure; buy all the hardware and softwares that are required. And for this new technology to bear fruits to these companies embracing it, the employees of the concerned companies should be taken through some training before they are left to operate the equipment. This training will ensure that equipment will be properly handled during business time.
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