Section 03 - How?

Spot the barriers

There are some barriers faced by businesses even if they want to enter to an IT privileged environment. Let’s know what are them before entering into the application part.

1.      Cost of new equipments

The main reason which lots of companies hesitate to take advantages of IT is this. But the thing all the entrepreneurs know is that this is a long term investment. Plus you’ll start reducing your costs in many ways to pay for your financial costs. Having a clear understanding about your company’s environment will make your decisions more wise and smart in moving to an IT environment. Study your own business and go for the cheapest, but long lasting IT solutions.

2.      Employee Training and making awareness

This is a procedure which should be wisely managed. You can use this procedure to motivate your people if you do this wisely, but if you don’t, they’ll be unhappy about the ongoing changes. And the hardest situations are replacing IT equipments with current workers. The best thing is going for a plan and best management.  

3.      Changes of Procedures

The traditional procedures will be replaced by IT powered procedures. It may confused the workers and demotivate them if the change of the procedure not happened in a scientific procedure.

1.      Legal restrictions

In some countries, not all the facilities may be available to use for the businesses due to legal restrictions. This may be because of the countries’ security and cultural reasons.

For e.g –

·         In Sri Lanka, GPS usage were limited and monitored during the war period. In some countries, Google Maps is blocked.

·         All the websites which are delivering news, must be registered at TRCSL[1] in Sri Lanka

·         In china, Google was restricted to avoid searching harmful things to government

·          

In this scenario, ventures can go for some substitution IT solutions and request as an industry to the government for the law adjustments.

Tools available to use

Let’s discuss how to avoid the difficulties discussed in the previous chapter in pre-IT era.

·         How to overcome difficulties in designing the product

This was absolutely solved by the I.T privileges, there are varies types of software applications that can be used for modeling prototypes. For example

Jewelries                                      – JewelCAD/3D Max/Maya

Plotting and House Planning     – AutoCAD

Machinery Prototyping              - AutoCAD/3D Max/Maya

These softwares can be downloaded through internet. But the prices of these softwares are high due to the quality and powerfulness and the sole ownership of them. The selections of what to buy and what should not buy, should be based on the scale and the financial status of the venture.

However there is a good news for the all types and scales of ventures, specially for small scale businesses. Those softwares are called Open-source softwares.

What are open source softwares?

The word “Open source” is used to the softwares which are free to develop and distribute. These softwares are designed and developed by the generous people and institutions all over the world who think the IT should be free for everyone. In some

Lets see what are the replacements for the above mentioned softwares by open source softwares.

JewelCAD                - FreeCAD

3D Max/Maya         -Blender3D

·         High cost in labor

Labor cost can be reduced in many ways using Information technology. Machines took thousands of human jobs to it’s hand. So the cost of labor is now at an undercontrolable level in this IT era. There are lots of computer packages which will support your company to reduce the costs of labor.

As we described in the previous section, the cost of labor contained some negotiation skills of some special skilled people. But computer brought most of their skills to a level of useable for any kind of trained user.(But still there are many skills which cannot be imitated by a computer)

For eg.      – Stunning arts creations made easy by illustrator, CorelDraw

                  -  Music play back, compose etc can be done by SoundForge    

           

·         Received fewer feedbacks from customers

Information technology developed with the communication. So nowadays every business can get more closer to the customers and do what the customers’ really need.

When it comes to receiving customer feedbacks, IT unveiled many ways to make it success. Businesses who need to have customer feedbacks should use the most convenient and available way to their target customers. And also the companies should consider about the type of their products.

For examples –

FMCG products, consumed by all the types of customers – Introducing a Hot Line for their feedbacks since phone is the most available method for everyone. Fax is also can be used.

Technical Products like laptops/mobile phones – Most of the companies now introducing real time customer feedback systems such as chatting, Skype guiding etc. HP has a web based chatting program, which can be used by HP consumers to have a chat with technicians in HP stores.

Softwares – Most of the software developing companies use emails to receive feedbacks from their customers. And also some of them have published “customer feedback forms” on their websites to collect more sorted and meaningful feedbacks. And some of the softwares collect customer usage details in background and send them to the parent site automatically.

·         Advertising

I.T. introduced a new dimension to the creativeness. So it brought a huge leap to the advertising industry. Companies had to hire specially talented individuals for their advertising perposes at previous decades, such as creating models, paint posters, draw arts, write artistic letters etc. But now, everything changed, softwares like Photoshop, CorelDraw, Illustrater, 3D Max, Maya unleashed the so called talents to the ordinary users who had knowledge to use those softwares. This brought the cost of advertising down. Not only softwares, all the hardware equipments which are supporting for a better advertising output, were developed parallely 

·         Online marketing

·         Reduce costs

·         Cheating and frauds

The probability of cheating is taken to a “peace in mind” level by IT. It helps you to track out the frauds automatically and semi-automatically. Lets consider some of the equipments available into use of ordinary companies.

1.      Attendance Record Solutions –

The main hedaches we discussed in our previous section is attendance signing book cheats. But later on “punch cards” were introduced. But it also contained some probabilities in cheating because punch card is tranferrable. Then ventures introduced digital ID cards to be swipped by entrance but still it took some disadvantages with it. Managements had to supervise the swiping/punching machines. But the rest of the procedure made easy by there machines too. Payrolls were immediately created and calculated accurately with this systems.

Finally, the fingerprint reader came up with solving all the problems. As we know someone’s fingerprint cannot be done by another one. so supervision cost is also now reduced and nowadays fingerprint readers are working with much more databases, like employees blood groups, birthdays, health conditions, contact information etc. And also by using that “fingerprint cannot be transferred” fact, most of the companies which are supposed to work under high secured environments, use this equipment to grant access into their premises. Though the supervision cost is reduced, still the installation cost in high in this technique. Therefore, if a company is considering applying a fingerprint reader into their process, first they should work on a cost benefit analysis. 

E.g. - for a company, which has 20-30 employees, fingerprint reader is less benefiting than the cost spent.

-If a company prefers much security and the cost, this is the comparatively cheapest way to grant access only to authorized persons.

2.      Supervision solutions

Supervision is needed in many business industries, specially in companies needed a high security level. But supervision is used to eliminate frauds and cheats. And to evaluate overall business progressions, efficiencies etc.

When it comes to IT, there are many supervision methods to be used

CCT Camera systems – This system is used in many companies to monitor the premises and the persons accessing it.  The initials, CCT stands for Closed Circuit Television.

e.g –   Control the access to the premises

           Monitor the thieves in Supermarkets, Offices, Showrooms

           Check the efficiency of the workers in factories

Specially programmed utilities [2] - For the companies which have successfully applied I.T. into their processes, can use special utilities to maintain the efficiency level of the workers automatically.

Eg –   Some of the data entry companies use utilities to track “number of entries” done by the user and automatically feeds the statics to the system to calculate their daily, monthly bonuses and evaluate workers’ efficiency level.

Most of the companies, which are working with secret sensitive data, usually monitors their networks, internet connections using small utilities designed for that purpose. So those utilities instantly track if pre-set, those kind of  data is being passed via any kind of network.

Not only that, The biggest efficiency draining issue which is faced by the  companies which are using internet connections is, workers attempt to connect to the social networks (Facebook,Twitter),Video sites (YouTube),download zones (MediaFire) etc during the work hours. Now it is simple to track down and block the accessing attempts to those sites using special applications.

          

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[1] The Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRCSL) was established under the Sri Lanka Telecommunication (Amendment) Act – Source www.trc.gov.lk

[2] Utilities are a kind of small softwares that are used for a specific task.

Section 02 - Why?

Deep into the title

This report is an analysis about the applications of IT practices inside businesses. We have taken an approach to the topic through previous chapters. Now let’s go deeper into the title of this report

As we know, there are mainly 4 identified parallel processes inside a business. In practice, we identify them as “Departments”.  This is the standard departments’ structure of an average company

1.     Production Department

2.     Marketing Department

3.     Human Resources Department

4.     Finance Department

Note – The names/departments may be varied according to the type / scale / management /etc.  Of the business.

Let’s find what are the difficulties faced by these departments in this “Pre-IT era”. The difficulties may be varied from country to country.

Production Department

Production Department of an organization is like the heart of the whole company body. This is the place, which directs the company to the success or to the failure through the department’s ability to satisfy consumers. In early decades, when the IT less influenced into this departments, production processes were a kind of unsmooth. It was not because anything, people didn’t have any proper way to combine and communicate all the sub processes inside a department with each other. These were the main difficulties faced by Production Departments before influencing IT into their process

Difficulties in designing the product

Designers faced many problems during the designing part of their products. Specially when creating proto types and examples, they were stressed with the R&D budgets. In this scenario, niche production was much more complicated in some industries, such as in jewelry, readymade garments, house planning, ornament designing etc. where they couldn’t pre-produce a successful prototype or a model to the customer. Due to these reasons, the production cost also went high

High cost in labor

In previous decades without Information Technology, labor requirement for a production purpose was high due to non-industrial environment. So again, the cost rose up. And not only that, for some products/ services in some industries, the resource persons who had specialized skill on their job were very low. Therefore, it was a limitation for those industries to be boomed up. The knowledge and some skills were untrasferrable from a person to another person. Moreover, due to the lack of information transferability, some training programs consumed a major part of the company budget

When we talk about labor, there was another issue, which caused cost increasing. That is human faults, It was an unavoidable issue caused in industries which mostly use human labor. And authorities tried to control this using supervision methods, but ultimately again it affected to the cost.  

Received fewer feedbacks from customers

Due to the inflexibility and unavailability of information and communication sources, there was a very poor connectivity between customer and the producer. So the production departments faced a huge problem in adjusting their products according to customer needs. Sometimes they got to know about customer dislikes on their products when their markets fell significantly. Market researches were the only way of understanding the customer, but it is a high cost method that has its own disadvantages.

Marketing Department

This is the department where the Information Technology should be a basic requirement. But during the early decades before I.T. age, Marketing department concept was not very popular. However, the process of it operated in different different names and some of the future looking companies had marketing departments also. There also were some difficulties faced by Marketing Departments before influencing IT into their process

Less influenced advertising systems

There were limitations in designing advertisements and it was a huge process to create even a small advertisement.

Online marketing was not there

In that era, Online marketing was not there, so all the advantages we discuss about online marketing was only a dream. There was not any concept called e shopping. So all the buying and selling activities were happened in a physical manner.

Consumed much human labor

As we discussed above in the production part, the human labor consumption was high in marketing departments. Because all the stuffs were operated in a physical environment. People was a key factor on that scenario.

Failed in statistics

There were many hardships when marketing managers had to use statics for their decisions, all of them were manually collected, manually written data. And creation of information out of those data, took so much of time. Some information was unable to compare due to the high amount of data used to create them.

 

Human Resource Department

As we mentioned above, those departments faced high consumption of human labour. All the human labor consumption problems were end up with human resource department. So that is the main significant difficulty faced by HR departments in pre-IT era. And there were some other limitations too

Difficulties in creating payrolls

Creating payrolls was such a brain teasing duty at that time. Most of the HR managers’ time was spent on this task during the last weeks of month. And not only was that, calculating the allowances and other stuffs manually for each employee using the attendance signing sheets was a long task, specially when it comes to companies operate with thousands of employees.

Probability of cheating and frauds

In lots of businesses, the only way of marking the attendance of the employees was the attendance-signing sheet. This system was a failure method which led to lots of cheats. Specially when we consider about a huge company which had thousands of employees, HR managers were stressed in spotting the cheats on these attendance sheets and supervision methods were also complicated and expensive.

Finance Department

This is the department, which is responsible for producing financial reports and statements. The high human labor cost, Back office stress, cheats and frauds problems were same on this departments also before the IT era. And there were some other difficulties

Human Faults/Less accuracy

In creation of Financial Reports, all the entries were done by human hand, so there were much more probabilities to occur mistakes. And the accuracy in mathematical calculations, data were not in a level of satisfaction

Section 01 - What

What is meant by IT?

Definitions about the Information Technology are born through various institutes and persons. There are some of them, which were accepted by most of the communities. However, let’s get into a definition related to business field

“The term information technology or IT to refer to an entire industry. In actuality, information technology is the use of computers and software to manage information. In some companies, this is referred to as Management Information Services (or MIS) or simply as Information Services (or IS). The information technology department of a large company would be responsible for storing information, protecting information, processing the information, transmitting the information as necessary, and later retrieving information as necessary”

The History of Information Technology

            No, as you thought this section is not discussing about the history of “The Computer”. But it will discuss about the combined history with computer and Information / communication Technology.

The history of Information Technology can be separated into 4 periods for the ease of study. Those are

Characterized by a principal technology used to solve the input, processing, output and communication problems of the time:

1. Premechanical,
2. Mechanical,
3. Electromechanical, and
4. Electronic

Let’s peep deeper into these periods

Please Note – To ensure the quality of the information provide by this report, Author is producing the following history part by referring several information sources. See Bibliography

 

Premechanical, (3000 B.C. - 1450 A.D)

1. Writing and Alphabets--communication.

·         First humans communicated only through speaking and picture drawings.

·         3000 B.C., the Sumerians in Mesopotamia (what is today southern Iraq) devised Cuneiform [1]

·         Around 2000 B.C., Phoenicians created symbols

• The Greeks later adopted the Phoenician alphabet and added vowels; the Romans gave the letters Latin names to create the alphabet we use today.

2. Paper and Pens--input technologies.

• Sumerians' input technology was a stylus that could scratch marks in wet clay.
• About 2600 B.C., the Egyptians write on the papyrus plant
• Around 100 A.D., the Chinese made paper from rags, on which modern-day papermaking is based.

3. Books and Libraries: Permanent Storage Devices.

• Religious leaders in Mesopotamia kept the earliest "books"
• The Egyptians kept scrolls
• Around 600 B.C., the Greeks began to fold sheets of papyrus vertically into leaves and bind them together.

4. The First Numbering Systems.

• Egyptian system: The numbers 1-9 as vertical lines, the number 10 as a U or circle, the number 100 as a coiled rope, and the number 1,000 as a lotus blossom.
• The first numbering systems similar to those in use today were invented between 100 and 200 A.D. by Hindus in India who created a nine-digit numbering system.
• Around 875 A.D., the concept of zero was developed.

5. The First Calculators: The Abacus

Abacus is the 1st calculator of the world. But we know we still use it for education purposes. If you’re still unclear about what is abacus, a picture will clarify that.

 

 

The Mechanical Age: 1450 - 1840

1. The First Information Explosion.

·         Johann Gutenberg (Mainz, Germany)

·         Invented the movable metal-type printing process in 1450.

·         The development of book indexes and the widespread use of page numbers.

2. The first general purpose "computers"

·         Actually people who held the job title "computer: one who works with numbers."

3. Slide Rules, the Pascaline and Leibniz's Machine.

·         Slide Rule.

Early 1600s, William Oughtred, an English clergyman, invented the slide rule which is an early example of an analog computer.

·         The Pascaline. Invented by Blaise Pascal (1623-62).

4.      Babbage's Engines
Charles Babbage (1792-1871), eccentric English mathematician 

·         The Difference Engine

§  Working model created in 1822.

§  The "method of differences".

·         The Analytical Engine.

Designed during the 1830s and its’ parts remarkably similar to modern-day computers.

• The "store"
• The "mill"
• Punch cards.

Punch card idea picked up by Babbage from Joseph Marie Jacquard's (1752-1834) loom.

• Introduced in 1801.
• Binary logic
• Fixed program that would operate in real time.

Moreover, when we talk about the history of Information Technology, we never can forget Augusta Ada Byron (1815-52). A person who is honored as world’s first programmer.

The Electromechanical Age: 1840 - 1940.

The discovery of ways to harness electricity was the key advance made during this period. Knowledge and information could now be converted into electrical impulses.

1.      The Beginnings of Telecommunication.

·         Voltaic Battery. - Late 18th century.

·         Telegraph. - Early 1800s.

·         Morse Code. - Developed in1835 by Samuel Morse

·         Telephone and Radio. - Alexander Graham Bell.  1876

·         Followed by the discovery that electrical waves travel through space and can produce an effect far from the point at which they originated.

·         These two events led to the invention of the radio

2.      Electromechanical Computing

·         Herman Hollerith (1860-1929) in 1880.

Mr. Herman Hellorith is honored as the founder of mechanical tabulator based on punched cards. It rapidly tabulates statistics from millions of pieces of data.

·         The International Business Machines Corporation (IBM)

The 1st Logo of IBM

In IBM, Howard Aiken, a Ph.D. Student at Harvard University Built the Mark I Completed January 1942 8 feet tall, 51 feet long, 2 feet thick, weighed 5 tons, used about 750,000 parts

The Electronic Age: 1940 - Present

The discovery of ways to harness electricity was the key advance made during this period. Knowledge and information could now be converted into electrical impulses.

1.      Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC)

·         Found in 1946.

·         Used vacuum tubes (not mechanical devices) to do its calculations. Hence, first electronic computer.

·         Developers are John Mauchly, a physicist, and J. Prosper Eckert, an electrical engineer in the he Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania

·         Funded by the U.S. Army.

·         But it could not store its programs (its set of instructions)

2.      The First Stored-Program Computer(s)

·         Early 1940s, Mauchly and Eckert began to design the EDVAC - the Electronic Discreet Variable Computer.

·         John von Neumann's influential report in June 1945:"The Report on the EDVAC"

·         British scientists used this report and outpaced the Americans.

·         Max Newman headed up the effort at Manchester University

·         Where the Manchester Mark I went into operation in June 1948--becoming the first stored-program computer.

·         Maurice Wilkes, a British scientist at Cambridge University, completed the EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator) in 1949--two years before EDVAC was finished.

·         Thus, EDSAC became the first stored-program computer in general use (i.e., not a prototype).

3.      The Four Generations of Digital Computing.

·         The First Generation (1951-1958).

§  Vacuum tubes as their main logic elements.

§  Punch cards to input and externally store data.

§  Rotating magnetic drums for internal storage of data and programs

·         The Second Generation (1959-1963).

§  Vacuum tubes replaced by transistors as main logic element.

§  Magnetic tape and disks began to replace punched cards as external storage devices.

§  Magnetic cores (very small donut-shaped magnets that could be polarized in one of two directions to represent data) strung on wire within the computer became the primary internal storage technology.

·         The Third Generation (1964-1979)

§  Individual transistors were replaced by integrated circuits.

§  Magnetic tape and disks completely replace punch cards as external storage devices.

§  Magnetic core internal memories began to give way to a new form, metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) memory, which, like integrated circuits, used silicon-backed chips.

§  When we consider about Operating systems advanced programming languages like BASIC developed in this era. And Bill Gates and Microsoft got their start in 1975.

·         The Fourth Generation (1979- Present).

§  Large-scale and very large-scale integrated circuits (LSIs and VLSICs)

§  Microprocessors that contained memory, logic, and control circuits (an entire CPU = Central Processing Unit) on a single chip. This allowed for home-use personal computers or PCs, like the Apple (II and Mac) and IBM PC.

§  First Apple Mac released in 1984.

§  IBM PC introduced in 1981.

§  Debuts with MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System)

§  Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) for PCs arrive in early 1980s

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[1] Cuneiform script is one of the earliest known forms of written expression – from Wikipedia