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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