Monday, July 6, 2009
Nowadays, the use of technology is fast as easy. The common work environment today is totally
dependent on computers. All our work related applications are now completely automated, that is what the IT sector influenced us. IT professionals are people involved in essential management of sensitive data. In such ways, IT influenced the industry-level of the business as well as ruled the world in many aspects. With IT, some of the systems help those organizations to share information and end linguistic barriers across the continents. The use of technology has not only made communication cheaper, but also possible much quicker. Computerized, IT-based business processes have made many businesses turn to the Internet for increased productivity and greater profitability. Because of the IT industry, people from diverse cultures are able to personally communicate and exchange valuable ideas. This has greatly reduced prejudice and thus increased sensitivity. Information Technology made some influences with regards to business aspects. Specialist in this field like programmers, analyzers and developers, come up to an application that improve business processes simultaneously. For larger operations, IT provides number of low-cost
business options to tap higher productivity and a special category for the larger operations as well. Many businessmen have enabled updates in terms of the technology they are using to increase productivity and identify a market niche that would never have been possible without the connectivity. People do not only connect faster with the help of information technology, but they are also able to identify like-minded individuals and extend help, while strengthening ties. With the use of the so-called technologies in a certain organization, business transactions are automated and thus require little or no human intervention after all. With that, job levels in the workplace have minimized, repetitions of task are eliminated and there would be no loss due to human error. The development of information technology will surely help each organization to achieve their certain goals and become globally competitive.
As much as IT is concerned, there comes the Information System, which is then designed to help certain organizations to have system of people, data records, activities that is processed and some organization’s manual and automated processes. Through Information System and Technologies, an organization utilizes flexible, and efficient data solutions to gain immediate access to critical tracking, management, and systematic information modified to their industry-specific needs.
Company Visited: LDS Employment Resource Service
The LDS Employment Resource Service (ERS) is non-profit service supported by The Church Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It has been in existence for over (10) years now in the Philippines. Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Thousands of job seekers and hundreds of companies have benefited from free services of the ERS worldwide. Their objective is to help people economically self-reliant through employment, education and self-employment. We had an interview with Mr. Philip Tan, Area Manager for Employment in LDS. He stated some advantage and disadvantage of Information System in their company. One of these advantage is that with IS, it is useful for them to serve their clients since they have computerized systems for financial track keeping expenses and real time recording of expenses. Moreover, the disadvantage he states is that when they are so IT/IS dependent, the time the Internet or the systems becomes down all those files saved will vanish if there would be no backup initiated.
LDS offers free services to those employees and job seekers as well. For employees, they do have free advertisements of manpower requirements, free access to their website and free use of the facility to conduct interviews or recruitment events such as job fairs. For job seekers they have business center that they can access facilities such as computers and the Internet. They also have training and resource center that will help clients build their business ideas and resources. The center maintained a computerized system of applicants and employers. This system allows the center to generate a list of qualified applicants for a given job vacancy. They use excel and database software to store some data.
Mr. Tan also states the best IT practices their company has. They make use of the technology to lessened men hours to produce reports. They use people soft in accounting purposes. They also try not to use company cards, which is connected in their accounting system. They do also have localized network that is beneficial on their part since they can access some data through file sharing over a shared network.
What are those risks in IT/IS change?
According to Mr. Tan, the risks that they will encounter when IT/IS change is that they will lose the data stored and with that they cannot keep in touch with the client. Their company IT structure already provides them with necessary benefits, with changes there would be negative and positive impact on their part. He also said that if there is a change in their information system, it also mean that they have to find more skilled persons to operate the new technology the company will had. If there were a need to improve the facilities they had, then it would mean more expenses for the company. On the positive side of view, having the IT/IS change will give best results when it is properly planned and organized. Having great IT/IS in the organization, it simply means that their work would be done simpler and not time consuming. 