Information Technology Management Part I

The information Technology Revelution While the steam engine and mechanization Created an Industraial Revelution over 150 years ago. 1,Innovation One- The Substituation of mechines for humans skill and effort. 2,The Subsituation of inanimate For animal Sources of power - The steam engine Creating and unlimited source of energy 3,The substituation of new raw materials,espcially minerals,for veggetable and animal substances. The importance of innovation in the Industrial Revolution. In the Technology Revolution we have seen the rapid adoption of many innovations including mainframe computers, laptops, networks, the Internet, assembly language, fourth generation languages, spreadsheet programs and other advanced software programs.In the Technology Revolution, companies use IT as a new source of energy for processing and accessing information.This technology helps the organization collect, store, retrieve, and apply knowledge to solve problems; IT converts the raw material of information into usable knowledge.The Technology Revolution, like the Industrial Revolution, has changed the economy, creating new industries and ways of doing business.Information Technology, however, extends far beyond the computational capabilities of computers. Today computers are used extensively for communications. They are also used for their traditional roles of data storage and computation.

Overview of Information Technology in Workplace Information Technology refers to all forms of technology applied to processing, storing, and transmitting information in electronic form. The physical equipment used for this purpose includes computers, communications equipment and networks, laptops, smartphones and tablets such as iPads. Information systems execute organized procedures that process and/or communicate information.We define information as a tangible or intangible entity that serves to reduce uncertainty about some state or event. Data can originate from the internal operations of the firm and from external entities such as suppliers or customers. Data also comes from external databases and services; for example, organizations purchase a great deal of marketing and competitive information. Brokerage firms provide a variety of research on different companies to clients. An information system usually processes this data in some way and presents the results to users. With the easy availability of personal computers, users often process the output of a formal system themselves in an ad hoc manner.

Overview of Information Technology in the Workplace Many systems are used routinely for control purposes in the organization and require limited decision making. The accounts receivable application generally runs with little senior management oversight. It is a highly structured application with rules that can be followed by a clerical staff. A department manager handles exceptions. The output of some systems may be used as a part of a program or strategy. The system itself could be implementing a corporate strategy, such as simplifying the customer order process.Many computers are connected together using various kinds of communications lines to form networks. Through a network, individuals and organizations are linked together. Firms are willing to provide direct access to their systems for suppliers and customers.If the first era of computing was concerned with computation, the second era is about communications.A system might help managers to make decisions Contributions of IT to the Wrokplace The computer has been called "the machine that changed the world." We believe that Information Technology has and will continue to revolutionize management.

The T-Form Organization Managers delegate tasks and decision making to lower levels of management, and information systems make data available at the level of management where it is needed to make decisions.In this way, the organization provides a fast response to competitors and customers. Some members of the organization primarily work remotely without having a permanent office assigned. The company's technological infrastructure features networks of computers. Individual client workstations connect over a network to larger computers that act as servers.

The organization has an internal Intranet, and internal client computers are connected to the Internet so members of the firm can link to customers, suppliers, and others with whom they need to interact.They can also access the huge repository of information contained on the Internet and the firm's own Intranet.Technology-enabled firms feature highly automated production and electronic information handling to minimize the use of paper and rely extensively on images and optical data storage. Technology is used to give workers jobs that are as complete as possible. Ten Major contributions of Information Technology to the modern workplace.

Provides developing countries with opportunities to compete with the industrialized nations.Creates new relationships between customers and suppliers who electronically link themselves together.Presents the opportunity for electronic commerce, which reduces purchasing cycle times, increases the exposure of suppliers to customers, and creates greater convenience for buyers.Provides new ways to design organizations and new organizational structures. Enables tremendous efficiencies in production and service industries through electronic data interchange to facilitate just-in-time production. Changes the basis of competition and industry structure, for example, in the airline and securities industries.Provides mechanisms through groupware for coordinating work and creating a knowledge base of organizational intelligence. Makes it possible for the organization to capture the knowledge of its employees and provide access to it throughout the organization. Contributes to the productivity and flexibility of knowledge workers.Provides the manager with electronic alternatives to face-to-face communications and supervision. Information Technology and the Manager Because technology is so pervasive, managers at all levels and in all functional areas of the firm are involved with IT.Managers are involved in a wide range of decisions about technology, decisions that are vital to the success of the organization.On the following page, you will find the results of a survey of managers, who were asked for their opinions on the importance of IT.

The Challenge of Change A major feature of Information Technology is the changes that IT brings. Those who speak of a revolution from technology are really talking about change.Business and economic conditions change all the time; a revolution is a discontinuity, an abrupt and dramatic series of changes in the natural evolution of economies.In the early days of technology, change was gradual and often not particularly significant The advent of personal computers accelerated the pace of change, and when the Internet became available for profit-making activities around 1992, change became exponential and revolutionary.In the office, companies will convert assembly line operations for processing documents to a series of tasks that one individual or a small group can perform from a workstation.

The firm also adopts and uses electronic agents, a kind of software robot, to perform a variety of tasks over networks. These organizations use communications technology to form temporary task forces focused on a specific project. Technology like e-mail and groupware facilitate the work of these task forces.These temporary work-groups may include employees of customers, suppliers, and/or partner corporations; they form a virtual team that meets electronically to work on a project.The organization is linked extensively with customers and suppliers. There are numerous electronic customer/supplier relationships. These linkages increase responsiveness, improve accuracy, reduce cycle times, and reduce the amount of overhead when firms do business with each other The close electronic linking of companies doing business together creates virtual components where traditional parts of the organization appear to exist, but in reality exist in a novel or unusual manner. The traditional inventory of raw materials and subassemblies is likely not to be owned or stored by a manufacturing firm. This virtual inventory actually exists at suppliers' locations.