I was thinking about different technologies that people may or may not use at work. At my work in the finance department as well as other finance deptartments we use SAP to enter and track financial transactions. We also use an ERP(enterprise resource planning) system to conduct business on a main server and track all internal activities such as payroll, employee training, and customer accounts. I have never not had such systems in a working environment. Is there anyone who can relate to these types of systmes or has used other types of systems besides SAP or ERP or has not yet integrated to something like this?
Organizations always strive to improve bottom line through cost cutting, productivity improvement, process enhancement and efficient strategic and operational management. Technology plays an ever more important role in all of these activities. Evolution of technology, starting from mechanical type writers to the latest mobile computing devices, not only has improved productivity, both quantitatively and qualitatively, but also has changed the way we work, behave and interact with each other at work place. We don't use a diary to look up our appointments, rather we use Outlook calendars. Sales professionals don't even use outlook colanders to lookup their schedules to call their leads, they rather use the cloud at salesforce.com. A consultant doesn’t have to make sure that the client has an overhead projector to give his presentation; he can use the projector built into his mobile device for that purpose. Technology, for sure, has made all of us more efficient and more productive. Secured networks like Virtual Private network, Efficient office collaboration software like file sharing, Outlook, WebEx, Cisco's telepresence has made work place literally virtual that transcends geographic and time zone boundaries. This ability to work from anywhere has brought about a paradigm shift to the way Organizations work and conduct business. More and more employees are either telecommuting or visit work place only when needed. I am part of a virtual team that is almost spread throughout the world. Almost all members of my team work out of home. Colleagues don't chat over at the break room or during the lunch break anymore; rather we chat through Office Communicator. We don't get to see each other physically, rather we say "Hi" to each other over phone and through web cam. Technology has influenced organizational behavior in such a way that employees are more task and target oriented; they feel autonomous; they save time and money that they otherwise would have spent in commuting; and they get to spend more quality time with their family. On the flip side, the employees rarely develop the social bonding with each other that they probably would have developed by physically going to the work place. Organizations save money in terms of real-estate and infrastructure cost, and have access to a geographically wide spread pool of talented workers.
The lack of bonding when working with a virtual team is certainly prevalent. I'm also part of a team that's spread around the country...working with people that I've never actually met and most of whom I've only spoken with through email. There certainly is a "disconnect" when working with a group of people in such a fashion...That sense of being part of a team is greatly lessened. It amazes me that as technology has advanced and methods of communication have increased, I actually seem to spend less and less time around the very people I spend my time communicating with.
Technology has impacted our life to such an extent that we cannot think of ourselves without it. Cellphone, TV, car, air conditioners, heater, computer etc. have become basic needs rather than demands. On the broader perspective, we cannot live without technology but as far as technology at work is concerned we cannot even imagine a company without internet, emails, printers, phones, desktops. But somewhere we pay a toll on it. I was reading an article before few months. It unveils new face of technology. Huge data centers, servers, electronics and millions of other things which are wearing new technology mask are in fact biggest planet polluter. They utilize electricity that frequently comes from coal-burning power plants or other sources of energy, energy that is not renewable. And while producing this electricity, high carbon contents are emitted in atmospheric layers. So, very first requirement of technology should be “Energy efficient”. According to a survey by Rice university, Houston; IT industry in US will consume 4 times of electricity in next 10 years as compared to today. So there is a strong need of energy efficient technology. Green500.com provides a ranking of the most energy-efficient supercomputers in the world. On this website we will see that IBM is on the top who is trying to reduce their supercomputer energy consumption. So, there should be more sustainable tech products. Otherwise 4 times greater use of electricity will lead to same intensity carbon emission in next decade. Moreover, technology is advancing at an exponential rate. Nobody imagined dot com bubble burst. Therefore, these IT monsters should be designed efficiently in order to keep their hunger for energy down.
Blaire, I recently started at a health industry lab in the finance department where we use a combination of Microsoft Great Planes, FRx, and an array of other systems to report and keep books. The sales team uses a system called Sales Logic, which does not interact with those systems we use in finance at all. As this is my first job I have not had a chance to work with SAP or a more established system used by larger companies. However, as my company grows, it seems that having this systems that do not connect is causing an inordinate amount of work which could be avoided. I have spent a large portion of my first weeks attempting to grasp how each works and what I can use each system to produce. Extreme growth over the last 3 years (tripled in size to around 1500 nationwide) likely is the cause of this issue. This company is extremely exciting and has unlimited potential and it would be interesting to see what type of impact the implementation of a system such as SAP would have.
Ian C., I am wondering if workplace politics is absent in a virtual team. What's the best way to build trust with your virtual colleague, who can seem distant and disconnected? Can you get the personal vulnerable info out of your colleague over the official electronic media, which is key to building trust and confidence? Does making your colleague a facebook-friend help fill some of these gap? I guess this is more of a question for the "Virtual team" blog.
In today’s world, having the right type and amount of technology is vital for a global company to succeed. Having an enterprise resource system to specialized in house systems can help a company streamline and make its processes flow more efficiently. I believe a company that is more systems and automation based will have a comparative advantage in expanding its operation globally over other companies that hesitates in implementing systems. SAP and Oracle are two of the more popular ERP system in which large global companies have in place to help them keep track of things like purchase orders, purchase requisitions, pricing, financial transactions, and shipping documents. Also these ERP systems acts as the company’s official general ledger so that when the company gets audited, all financial information can easily be pulled and looked at from one data source. ERP systems are great for people in accounting and finance as it consolidates all financial entries into a vast selection of reports like trial balance, balance sheet, and detail transaction register just to name a few. These reports helps accountants see past entries to each GL account and helps finance forecast, like their business’s expenses, liabilities, inventory reserves, and revenue. Business Objects Desktop Intelligence is another reports based system linked to SAP in which people within the company can create custom query reports that automatically refreshes itself with the latest data within a set time frame. BO is a powerful tool as it can provide high to granular level information in custom formatted reports for management to view. Essbase, an Excel add on is a great database tool in which a company’s internal IT team can programmed the tool to have it linked to a system and Essbase will pull information based on parameters set by the user from the system and into an Excel worksheet within seconds. An example of Essbase usefulness would be a person in finance getting ready to prepare a long range forecast and needs a variety of information from three years past to see the trend, the user can input the parameters into Essbase and the database tool will have the information pulled into the user’s worksheet instantaneously. This gives the user more time on preparing the forecast instead of spending time pulling in information. PeopleSoft is a powerful human resource system in which it helps a global company prepare and keep track of things like payroll and time bank for all employees globally. In house systems are vital to a company’s success where it will be advantageous to have a system developed whenever there is a lot of something. For example, if a company has a lot of contracts, the company may have a system developed to stored and organized the contracts based on a unique parameter.
Based on experience, I believe having a strong system based background in conjunction with “subject matter” expertise like GAAP and forecast modeling will give a person a comparative advantage especially when working for a global company.
I work at a large company that modernizes and maintains aircraft. We utilize SAP for our ERP system. I mainly work within the functional areas of Planning and Operations as an Industrial Engineer. My role is basically to study current processes and to come up with innovative ideas to make activities more efficient and less costly. I have mainly used SAP and Business Warehouse to pull data for research and analysis. Although I do agree that ERP systems are beneficial, I wonder how many companies use these systems to their full potential. I also wonder if many companies even need such an expansive system (such as SAP, Oracle, etc.).
I have never used SAP on the financial side of the business so my views are skewed towards how we use the system in Operations. One of the major disadvantages I have noticed with a mass produced ERP System, such as SAP, is that it is really hard to “tailor” the system towards a particular business. These large ERP systems are geared toward fitting all organizations. Thus, tailoring the system is not recommended and keeping up with the system updates is nearly impossible when the “out-of-the-box” system is modified. Also, there are so many transactions within SAP it is hard to navigate through the system to gather the information you are looking for without training.
My experience with technology such as SAP brings me to my main question. With the steep incline in technology in the workplace (such as ERP systems), how much of the new technology is being used to its full capacity and do the users fully understand the inner workings of the software? How many of us actually know how to use every gadget on our smart phones? The instruction manual for mine was about as thick as the Dallas phone book. Let’s put it this way, I skimmed through it.
"Where a new invention promises to be useful, it ought to be tried." said Thomas Jefferson which is true because if there's a new technology introduced in town, we ought to try it. Now, who can live without phones,cell-phones,fax machines, scanners,computers,Emails, and Google. Technology is just a simple word but has become a very big part of our day to day lives. Internet is one of them. One of the widely used technology in workplace is internet.
Internet is one of the best workplace example that i can think of currently. Because it gives us access to a whole new world. I don't think people at workplace can live without Google. If google was not there, many questions related to work would have never been answered with wide range of options. The IT industry can definitely be thought of a place where these different technologies are not only used but implemented and taken advantage of. Like I use JAVA as one of my major workplace technology. The day when I started using Java was just a basic programming language but now there are hundreds of different developments in the such as AJAX, Web Services, J2ME etc to name a few for dynamic development. And these different technologies have made the work much more than just being simple. The bright side is we can develop so many things and that too cost-efficient. We are comfortable and enjoying what benefits technology is providing us which is easy o use, efficient, effective, communicative, fast and much more than this.The new and new technologies releasing everyday which we use in our work and day-to-day day activities has increased the communication as well as efficiency for business purposes.
But is this good ? At workplace and in our everyday lives this technology has a big role. But of course if you have advantages, then disadvantages come as a package. One of the disadvantages of technology is, its hard to quantify the actual work being done is for professional or personal use. In addition companies also have technologies like Track plus, ticket tracking system to track down and restrict the sites as well.
In Today's modern world, We are blessed with different technologies in our everyday life and work.Because of which we can freely search for solutions for issues in search engines like Google, Communicate with people, Chat around workplace friends, Implement new ideas, Work from home etc.
There are a lot of comments here about ERP systems. I’ve had the fortune to complete 3 life-cycle implementations of SAP, an upgrade to Kronos payroll system, and I’m about to embark on another implementation of SAP R/3 and SAPHR.
Companies have either been successful or had tremendous issues with their ERP implementations. Michael Hammer, a consultant who wrote Re-engineering the Organization, did a lot of research related to companies that implemented SAP, and found there were 2 groups; a bi-modal curve of success. The difference between the winners and the losers was the amount of time companies spent managing the people aspect of the implementation.
In your company, how many supporting processes are in place to manage your ERP systems? Corporate IT? Training and Development? Defined processes and procedures? Standard organizational design? How much did your company spend on implementation?
As technology continues to evolve, we have to remember that a system is only as good as the end user. New technology should always be developed with concern paid to those who will ultimately implement and manage the tools moving forward.
@Ian C, I agree, Technology is cold. How do you reach out and shake hands across a video conference? I read the book "Negotiate this" by Herb Cohen, who said that the first act of Negotiating anything is by being in the same room, it immediately increases the difficulty of outright refusal. I guess a face to face is a social act. Some people have suggested making facebook connections with distant people, this is a tough dilemma, often these people are not even at the "acquaintance" level much less the friend level.
@Kevin, I agree with your premise of a gaining a competitive advantage if technology is deployed effectively at work. Having used many of same software tools mentioned above,I can see a major difference in productivity, efficiency and communication between companies that use new and emerging tech. to improve and support the enterprise.
I have similar concerns on the disadvantages of tech. at work. Lack of face to face communication and the related disadvantages especially in a multi national company are one of the main drawbacks.
@A.J. yes the systems are only as good as the end user. One dimension note examined is how different cultures use technology at work.
Is it ok to have a conference call versus a traditional face to face meeting when trying to win new business with a new client in a different country? What local traditions and customs can be easily offended when using new forms of communication, for example, will it be normal in the future to have meetings on mobile devices and on the move as opposed to a traditional conference room setting. In addition to the lack of "bonding" when working in a team spread out in different geographic locations, there is also lack of accurate feedback and conflicts tend to escalate faster when there is miscommunication.The issues would have been easily resolved if the teams built trust and met face to face on a regular basis. As the technology at our work places evolve, finding the right balance between high tech. and traditional methods of running firms should be a main focus. It seems like we will reach a soon reach a tipping point when it applies to communication devices, mobile electronic unit and system applications. Today it is common to see many managers with two or more cellphones and one laptop. Will all these devices be replaced by one super tablet? or will future workers have 4 or more mobile electronic devices.
I work in the hospital industry and technology is all around and ever changing. It seems like when you finally get the capital dollars to upgrade a piece of equipment it is obsolete already and you need to start preparing its replacement. Don't get me wrong the wonders of technology for our patients is incredible and is making the healthcare system even safer and more productive. With healthcare reform on the horizon we are going to see more and more technological advancements placed into the hospitals. Does anyone else forsee the technological capabilities of hospitals and doctors clinics drastically changing with the healthcare reform?
Although technology at work can compromise relationships between co-workers and clients. I believe technology can be used as an essential element for training employees. Many companies are implementing online and virtual training programs in order to become more cost and time efficient. Whether a company is training new employees or updating current employees, virtual training is beneficial because the employees can train from their everyday office or even from home. This saves both the company and the employees time and money that can be spent on other productive tasks. It has also proved to be a safer option for those who are in military or medical training because it allows those individuals to get as much virtual practice as necessary in order to ensure that they are ready to handle real situations.
Many companies are using technology more today but it does not always have a positive effect. It has been brought up that virtual training is a positive of today's technology but there are also some major negatives to virtual training. 1. Not all training translates well to computer based trainings taken on one's own. At my job we actually have online training for such things as diversity training and EEO training which I do not think translates well and would be better done in a classroom setting. 2.There is no way of knowing whether the employee is paying any attention and absorbing the material. Even with virtual trainings that have tests at the end a person can guess there way through them. In a classroom setting an instructor could get everyone involved and participating in the class and a person should at least pick up some pieces of knowledge even by accident. 3.The biggest negative for virtual training is employees learning absolutely nothing. In my office there is a group of people who cheat their way through all mandatory trainings. One person takes the training and prints out their answers then gives copies to everyone else to enter into their test. The others are done in a minute or two and nothing is learned. Virtual training is a good tool but relying on it complete would be a mistake.
Technology in the workplace has had such an impact on efficiency and has had the ability to connect us to others in a way like we've never seen before. However, the problem that arises due to the prevalence of email communication amongst colleagues is the fact that many things can become lost in translation. A greater emphasis is now put on one's grammar usage and spelling, as well as the tone that tends to come across in an email communication. It's absolutely key that more training needs to be done in order to ensure that people in the workforce can learn to communicate properly in this manner. It is a manager's duty to delegate and direct, which can come across as pushy, or insensitive over an email communication. Now, more than ever, the simple use of please and thank you is proven to go a long way over email communications when in this situation. Grammar and spelling usage can potentially do harm to someone’s professional credibility when used improperly over email. As face to face communication is dwindling, it is possible that we have many professional relationships with people whom we have never even met. Essentially, email correspondence is the only perception of each other that we may have. It's important to put our best "virtual foot forward" in this case. In an odd way, this modern mode of communication is causing us to get back to basics. It's important to brush up on our grammar and spelling, as well as revisit some of those grade school lessons in manners and courtesy.
@Kara, Technology is not always a great substitute for real human training. Case in point webinars developed by many companies to educate employees in Diversity, Safety etc. These seem very sterile and as we recently discussed in class more of an irritant. We are required to take these annually (its exactly the same every year) and there is 10 question quiz at the end. I never learned any thing from these and its my belief that companies get insurance deductions if they can get all their employees to take these stupid webinars.
It was not too long ago the level of connectedness of today's world was just a prophecy. Such as having people work on projects from different places in the world or having people working from home. I remember Cell phones were big and clunky, only owned by the affluent people and even then most of them carried them in their cars and were not so mobile. I remember the first time I heard about BlackBerries, I thought they were some type of fruit, not all-purpose remote office device which would later in life become a part of me. Today, the use of wireless devices is widespread in the United States, and growing. About 71 percent of America's 108 million households own at least one cell phone, according to Forrester Research Inc. More than 25 million households now own laptop computers, according to Forrester. And 5.3 million households have wireless Internet access. This has allowed for corporation to be global and have teams that can literally be working on a project 24/7/365. In my opinion, technology has brought world together but it has come with a cost. From my own experience of working with people from many different countries, I have seen both the benefits of technology as well as the cost of being global. One of the main problems that I see with having so much technology in the workplace is that the human factor is no longer there. I have never seen or even heard the voice of many of my team members. So I have essentially no human contact with them and I only see them as an email address which in many cases has brought frustration since an email can only express your feelings so much. On the other hand projects that would have taken a month to complete we have completed in two week thanks to people in other parts of the world working continuously. I think as technology progresses we will see that that human contact barrier will slowly decrease. I know that program such as skype and Facetime by apple has made video conference a great way to fully interact with your coworkers around the world.
Technology in the workplace has become a boon for productivity, but also for potential pitfalls. One aspect of technology that many organizations may not consider enough is the fact that with advanced technology comes a new type of threat.
For many companies, being on the cutting edge of technological trends is competitive advantage in the marketplace. However, focusing solely on implementing new technologies, without having the resources to protect and secure those technologies, is a huge mistake. As a simple example, consider a small business that has a warehouse to store and ship materials out of. Employees in the warehouse want to take advantage of WiFi technology in order to make their daily processes more efficient by connecting to their company's network via smart phones and tablet PCs. Without a proper understanding of how WiFi technology works, it's possible that the decision makers may simply bring a wireless router online without researching how to go about protecting the network. For a hacker or anybody wishing to disrupt the company's operations, an open, unencrypted wireless network would be a dream come true. Anybody with a wireless network card could log into the network and, with a little know-how, work their way into various terminals and obtain sensitive internal data.
Responsible companies should not only invest in relevant technology, but they should also invest in complementary security packages for that technology.
I agree with what BK wrote. It is so interesting that as soon as a great technology is created, hackers will try and find a way to hack into it. However another aspect that organizations now have to consider is monitoring employees. Technology does come with a price, a double edge sword. For all the productivity that is brought with technology, business must spend even more money on monitoring and safeguarding the technology. So in the end business must not only spend more money to receive the technology but also spend money to make sure it runs efficiently. Also, technology comes at a cost to employees as well. Employees are not expected to see and do more because of technology. Because workplace technology is happening so quickly, it is easy to become overloaded with information. In conclusion technology is definitely a blessing and a curse.
My perspective is a little different regarding this topic because I work for a fairly large church. I first have to say that it amazes me that people are surprised that a church even has caller ID. Technology plays a huge part in what we do everyday and touches every aspect of it. I agree with MaengSamiAM in that there is a cost to go with it.
We purchased a database 2 yrs ago that is web-based and supports multiple campuses (we have 13 different locations), or old database was not only server based but we had to have a separate application for each campus! So of course the new database was a favorably received.
Along with that came a lot of issues and many included our legal department. For example, being a non-profit, we have volunteers that help in administrative roles. Because of the ability to access name, address, phone number and email from any computer at any time - unsupervised, we had to create a process that includes a Confidentiality and an Acceptable Usage Policy for every person with access to this database; as well as running weekly reports by each department showing activity for each volunteer to deter anyone from any unethical behavior. With this comes the question of "This is my church, don't you trust me." It's no longer just a matter of trust, but because of what can happen with Technology it is now a matter of liability.
I am heading off to law school this upcoming fall once my MBA finished, with that being the case I have been sitting in on a fair number of trials. I have noticed a drastic technology change in the court room. This past week I have been sitting in on a massive $100million+ trial over two energy companies suing over a partnership disagreement. Both sides have have between 8-12 lawyers working on the case. The computer networking on either side is pretty amazing, each attorney has an ipad or a laptop where he can access all of the files pertaining to the case at any point. This has greatly reduced the amount paper required, which in turn related to costs in the long run. It also allows everything to be perfectly organized and documents can be added and accessed by all the members of the particular side. They are currently using a Version wireless router that provides a miniature network along with internet access and security from others access information on the network.
There are also a few applications for the ipad and other devises that provide an easy way to search through particular laws and older cases. This allows them to quickly find what they need to get something overturned while they have their window of opportunity. So now technology provides a competitive advantage, on top of increasing productivity and organization.
And thinking a bit more, most lawyers that are the primary litigators of a case tend to be older, some of them in their 60-70's. When you reach this age group people become less willing to adapt new strategies and techniques which in this particular case would be technology. If we follow those assumptions then we might find an increase in younger attorneys becoming more successful because of their comfort level working with and using technology to their advantage.
As many of the previous bloggers have posted, SAP is very prolific in industries, especially large-scale operations that need have their business functions tightly-integrated. This interwoven relationship results in the real-time data exchange bridging the gap that previously took place when data/communication handoffs took time, were unclear, or misunderstood. I have made my whole career centered around my SAP expertise. I started my career as a software safety engineer and after a few years, I craved a career change. Therefore, I took an SAP class and quickly thereafter, gained a new career in the IT department of a Fortune 500 company configuring SAP. I made another job change as a manufacturing engineer and the reason I got the job can be summarized in three letters: SAP. What amazes me is how many people around me are resistant to adopting the change that took place with our company's implementation of SAP. My perception is that I have continued to progress up the career ladder largely because I have been identified as an expert in SAP. As stated by previous bloggers, anyone in the company who readily adopts change and takes to new technology like a "duck to water" will likely progress faster in their career ambitions than those who don't. I have seen this first-hand myself. At all salary levels, those who have shown their competency and ease at using SAP have done better in their respective career paths than those who haven't.
Technology at work place is an interesting topic for me to share my perspectives as a biotechnology student.
As far as lab experiments are conducted , we work on very high tech instruments, which costs almost thousands of dollars. There is intensive reasearch going in the field of applied biotechnolgy to study the metabolic pathways of various diseases .The research is using various simple instruments like micropipettes, test tubes to complex instruments like pcr machines , high definition microscopes to spectrophotometers. The technology in our university for that matter any university is striving to attain best instuments to attain positive results of our research without contamination.
Technology plays a vital role in field of Biotechnology , especially the research part. Without the instruments like micropipptes, autoclave machines, chemicals no research can be done . Another important software technology we use is tools in the bioinformatics , where are all the previous and on going research journals are also stored . Using these data bases , the current research we do is made very simple.
When thinking of technology in the workplace it’s important to see what companies are implementing to cut costs and even become greener. In the firm I interned at last year I noticed some of the things they previously implemented to become greener and cut costs. The firm moved from using paper to almost paperless by making all of our workpapers electronic files that we transferred between our laptops and the final product was kept as an electronic file on a program specifically designed for our company. Also, many companies are implementing more efficient servers that run cooler and use less energy to run them. If anyone has information on how some companies are implementing tablets or ipads into the workplace, I would like to hear about it and if anyone thinks it’s an effective or smart thing to do with all the distractions they may bring.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking about different technologies that people may or may not use at work. At my work in the finance department as well as other finance deptartments we use SAP to enter and track financial transactions. We also use an ERP(enterprise resource planning) system to conduct business on a main server and track all internal activities such as payroll, employee training, and customer accounts. I have never not had such systems in a working environment. Is there anyone who can relate to these types of systmes or has used other types of systems besides SAP or ERP or has not yet integrated to something like this?
ReplyDeleteOrganizations always strive to improve bottom line through cost cutting, productivity improvement, process enhancement and efficient strategic and operational management. Technology plays an ever more important role in all of these activities. Evolution of technology, starting from mechanical type writers to the latest mobile computing devices, not only has improved productivity, both quantitatively and qualitatively, but also has changed the way we work, behave and interact with each other at work place.
ReplyDeleteWe don't use a diary to look up our appointments, rather we use Outlook calendars. Sales professionals don't even use outlook colanders to lookup their schedules to call their leads, they rather use the cloud at salesforce.com. A consultant doesn’t have to make sure that the client has an overhead projector to give his presentation; he can use the projector built into his mobile device for that purpose. Technology, for sure, has made all of us more efficient and more productive.
Secured networks like Virtual Private network, Efficient office collaboration software like file sharing, Outlook, WebEx, Cisco's telepresence has made work place literally virtual that transcends geographic and time zone boundaries. This ability to work from anywhere has brought about a paradigm shift to the way Organizations work and conduct business. More and more employees are either telecommuting or visit work place only when needed.
I am part of a virtual team that is almost spread throughout the world. Almost all members of my team work out of home. Colleagues don't chat over at the break room or during the lunch break anymore; rather we chat through Office Communicator. We don't get to see each other physically, rather we say "Hi" to each other over phone and through web cam.
Technology has influenced organizational behavior in such a way that employees are more task and target oriented; they feel autonomous; they save time and money that they otherwise would have spent in commuting; and they get to spend more quality time with their family. On the flip side, the employees rarely develop the social bonding with each other that they probably would have developed by physically going to the work place. Organizations save money in terms of real-estate and infrastructure cost, and have access to a geographically wide spread pool of talented workers.
The lack of bonding when working with a virtual team is certainly prevalent. I'm also part of a team that's spread around the country...working with people that I've never actually met and most of whom I've only spoken with through email. There certainly is a "disconnect" when working with a group of people in such a fashion...That sense of being part of a team is greatly lessened. It amazes me that as technology has advanced and methods of communication have increased, I actually seem to spend less and less time around the very people I spend my time communicating with.
ReplyDeleteTechnology has impacted our life to such an extent that we cannot think of ourselves without it. Cellphone, TV, car, air conditioners, heater, computer etc. have become basic needs rather than demands. On the broader perspective, we cannot live without technology but as far as technology at work is concerned we cannot even imagine a company without internet, emails, printers, phones, desktops. But somewhere we pay a toll on it.
ReplyDeleteI was reading an article before few months. It unveils new face of technology. Huge data centers, servers, electronics and millions of other things which are wearing new technology mask are in fact biggest planet polluter.
They utilize electricity that frequently comes from coal-burning power plants or other sources of energy, energy that is not renewable. And while producing this electricity, high carbon contents are emitted in atmospheric layers.
So, very first requirement of technology should be “Energy efficient”. According to a survey by Rice university, Houston; IT industry in US will consume 4 times of electricity in next 10 years as compared to today. So there is a strong need of energy efficient technology.
Green500.com provides a ranking of the most energy-efficient supercomputers in the world. On this website we will see that IBM is on the top who is trying to reduce their supercomputer energy consumption.
So, there should be more sustainable tech products. Otherwise 4 times greater use of electricity will lead to same intensity carbon emission in next decade. Moreover, technology is advancing at an exponential rate. Nobody imagined dot com bubble burst. Therefore, these IT monsters should be designed efficiently in order to keep their hunger for energy down.
Blaire, I recently started at a health industry lab in the finance department where we use a combination of Microsoft Great Planes, FRx, and an array of other systems to report and keep books. The sales team uses a system called Sales Logic, which does not interact with those systems we use in finance at all. As this is my first job I have not had a chance to work with SAP or a more established system used by larger companies. However, as my company grows, it seems that having this systems that do not connect is causing an inordinate amount of work which could be avoided. I have spent a large portion of my first weeks attempting to grasp how each works and what I can use each system to produce. Extreme growth over the last 3 years (tripled in size to around 1500 nationwide) likely is the cause of this issue. This company is extremely exciting and has unlimited potential and it would be interesting to see what type of impact the implementation of a system such as SAP would have.
ReplyDeleteIan C., I am wondering if workplace politics is absent in a virtual team. What's the best way to build trust with your virtual colleague, who can seem distant and disconnected? Can you get the personal vulnerable info out of your colleague over the official electronic media, which is key to building trust and confidence? Does making your colleague a facebook-friend help fill some of these gap? I guess this is more of a question for the "Virtual team" blog.
ReplyDeleteIn today’s world, having the right type and amount of technology is vital for a global company to succeed. Having an enterprise resource system to specialized in house systems can help a company streamline and make its processes flow more efficiently. I believe a company that is more systems and automation based will have a comparative advantage in expanding its operation globally over other companies that hesitates in implementing systems. SAP and Oracle are two of the more popular ERP system in which large global companies have in place to help them keep track of things like purchase orders, purchase requisitions, pricing, financial transactions, and shipping documents. Also these ERP systems acts as the company’s official general ledger so that when the company gets audited, all financial information can easily be pulled and looked at from one data source. ERP systems are great for people in accounting and finance as it consolidates all financial entries into a vast selection of reports like trial balance, balance sheet, and detail transaction register just to name a few. These reports helps accountants see past entries to each GL account and helps finance forecast, like their business’s expenses, liabilities, inventory reserves, and revenue. Business Objects Desktop Intelligence is another reports based system linked to SAP in which people within the company can create custom query reports that automatically refreshes itself with the latest data within a set time frame. BO is a powerful tool as it can provide high to granular level information in custom formatted reports for management to view. Essbase, an Excel add on is a great database tool in which a company’s internal IT team can programmed the tool to have it linked to a system and Essbase will pull information based on parameters set by the user from the system and into an Excel worksheet within seconds. An example of Essbase usefulness would be a person in finance getting ready to prepare a long range forecast and needs a variety of information from three years past to see the trend, the user can input the parameters into Essbase and the database tool will have the information pulled into the user’s worksheet instantaneously. This gives the user more time on preparing the forecast instead of spending time pulling in information. PeopleSoft is a powerful human resource system in which it helps a global company prepare and keep track of things like payroll and time bank for all employees globally. In house systems are vital to a company’s success where it will be advantageous to have a system developed whenever there is a lot of something. For example, if a company has a lot of contracts, the company may have a system developed to stored and organized the contracts based on a unique parameter.
ReplyDeleteBased on experience, I believe having a strong system based background in conjunction with “subject matter” expertise like GAAP and forecast modeling will give a person a comparative advantage especially when working for a global company.
I work at a large company that modernizes and maintains aircraft. We utilize SAP for our ERP system. I mainly work within the functional areas of Planning and Operations as an Industrial Engineer. My role is basically to study current processes and to come up with innovative ideas to make activities more efficient and less costly. I have mainly used SAP and Business Warehouse to pull data for research and analysis. Although I do agree that ERP systems are beneficial, I wonder how many companies use these systems to their full potential. I also wonder if many companies even need such an expansive system (such as SAP, Oracle, etc.).
ReplyDeleteI have never used SAP on the financial side of the business so my views are skewed towards how we use the system in Operations. One of the major disadvantages I have noticed with a mass produced ERP System, such as SAP, is that it is really hard to “tailor” the system towards a particular business. These large ERP systems are geared toward fitting all organizations. Thus, tailoring the system is not recommended and keeping up with the system updates is nearly impossible when the “out-of-the-box” system is modified. Also, there are so many transactions within SAP it is hard to navigate through the system to gather the information you are looking for without training.
My experience with technology such as SAP brings me to my main question. With the steep incline in technology in the workplace (such as ERP systems), how much of the new technology is being used to its full capacity and do the users fully understand the inner workings of the software? How many of us actually know how to use every gadget on our smart phones? The instruction manual for mine was about as thick as the Dallas phone book. Let’s put it this way, I skimmed through it.
What are the most important technologies that all companies should have?
ReplyDeleteWhat should their employees be given access to?
Should employees pay for extra technology requests?
"Where a new invention promises to be useful, it ought to be tried." said Thomas Jefferson which is true because if there's a new technology introduced in town, we ought to try it. Now, who can live without phones,cell-phones,fax machines, scanners,computers,Emails, and Google. Technology is just a simple word but has become a very big part of our day to day lives. Internet is one of them. One of the widely used technology in workplace is internet.
ReplyDeleteInternet is one of the best workplace example that i can think of currently. Because it gives us access to a whole new world. I don't think people at workplace can live without Google. If google was not there, many questions related to work would have never been answered with wide range of options. The IT industry can definitely be thought of a place where these different technologies are not only used but implemented and taken advantage of. Like I use JAVA as one of my major workplace technology. The day when I started using Java was just a basic programming language but now there are hundreds of different developments in the such as AJAX, Web Services, J2ME etc to name a few for dynamic development. And these different technologies have made the work much more than just being simple. The bright side is we can develop so many things and that too cost-efficient. We are comfortable and enjoying what benefits technology is providing us which is easy o use, efficient, effective, communicative, fast and much more than this.The new and new technologies releasing everyday which we use in our work and day-to-day day activities has increased the communication as well as efficiency for business purposes.
But is this good ? At workplace and in our everyday lives this technology has a big role. But of course if you have advantages, then disadvantages come as a package. One of the disadvantages of technology is, its hard to quantify the actual work being done is for professional or personal use. In addition companies also have technologies like Track plus, ticket tracking system to track down and restrict the sites as well.
In Today's modern world, We are blessed with different technologies in our everyday life and work.Because of which we can freely search for solutions for issues in search engines like Google, Communicate with people, Chat around workplace friends, Implement new ideas, Work from home etc.
There are a lot of comments here about ERP systems. I’ve had the fortune to complete 3 life-cycle implementations of SAP, an upgrade to Kronos payroll system, and I’m about to embark on another implementation of SAP R/3 and SAPHR.
ReplyDeleteCompanies have either been successful or had tremendous issues with their ERP implementations. Michael Hammer, a consultant who wrote Re-engineering the Organization, did a lot of research related to companies that implemented SAP, and found there were 2 groups; a bi-modal curve of success. The difference between the winners and the losers was the amount of time companies spent managing the people aspect of the implementation.
In your company, how many supporting processes are in place to manage your ERP systems? Corporate IT? Training and Development? Defined processes and procedures? Standard organizational design? How much did your company spend on implementation?
As technology continues to evolve, we have to remember that a system is only as good as the end user. New technology should always be developed with concern paid to those who will ultimately implement and manage the tools moving forward.
Please could you take this survey about Online Social Networking
ReplyDeleteClick here to take survey
@Ian C, I agree, Technology is cold. How do you reach out and shake hands across a video conference?
ReplyDeleteI read the book "Negotiate this" by Herb Cohen, who said that the first act of Negotiating anything is by being in the same room, it immediately increases the difficulty of outright refusal. I guess a face to face is a social act. Some people have suggested making facebook connections with distant people, this is a tough dilemma, often these people are not even at the "acquaintance" level much less the friend level.
@Kevin, I agree with your premise of a gaining a competitive advantage if technology is deployed effectively at work.
ReplyDeleteHaving used many of same software tools mentioned above,I can see a major difference in productivity, efficiency and communication between companies that use new and emerging tech. to improve and support the enterprise.
I have similar concerns on the disadvantages of tech. at work. Lack of face to face communication and the related disadvantages especially in a multi national company are one of the main drawbacks.
@A.J. yes the systems are only as good as the end user. One dimension note examined is how different cultures use technology at work.
Is it ok to have a conference call versus a traditional face to face meeting when trying to win new business with a new client in a different country? What local traditions and customs can be easily offended when using new forms of communication, for example, will it be normal in the future to have meetings on mobile devices and on the move as opposed to a traditional conference room setting.
In addition to the lack of "bonding" when working in a team spread out in different geographic locations, there is also lack of accurate feedback and conflicts tend to escalate faster when there is miscommunication.The issues would have been easily resolved if the teams built trust and met face to face on a regular basis.
As the technology at our work places evolve, finding the right balance between high tech. and traditional methods of running firms should be a main focus. It seems like we will reach a soon reach a tipping point when it applies to communication devices, mobile electronic unit and system applications. Today it is common to see many managers with two or more cellphones and one laptop. Will all these devices be replaced by one super tablet? or will future workers have 4 or more mobile electronic devices.
I work in the hospital industry and technology is all around and ever changing. It seems like when you finally get the capital dollars to upgrade a piece of equipment it is obsolete already and you need to start preparing its replacement. Don't get me wrong the wonders of technology for our patients is incredible and is making the healthcare system even safer and more productive. With healthcare reform on the horizon we are going to see more and more technological advancements placed into the hospitals. Does anyone else forsee the technological capabilities of hospitals and doctors clinics drastically changing with the healthcare reform?
ReplyDeleteAlthough technology at work can compromise relationships between co-workers and clients. I believe technology can be used as an essential element for training employees. Many companies are implementing online and virtual training programs in order to become more cost and time efficient. Whether a company is training new employees or updating current employees, virtual training is beneficial because the employees can train from their everyday office or even from home. This saves both the company and the employees time and money that can be spent on other productive tasks. It has also proved to be a safer option for those who are in military or medical training because it allows those individuals to get as much virtual practice as necessary in order to ensure that they are ready to handle real situations.
ReplyDeleteMany companies are using technology more today but it does not always have a positive effect. It has been brought up that virtual training is a positive of today's technology but there are also some major negatives to virtual training.
ReplyDelete1. Not all training translates well to computer based trainings taken on one's own. At my job we actually have online training for such things as diversity training and EEO training which I do not think translates well and would be better done in a classroom setting.
2.There is no way of knowing whether the employee is paying any attention and absorbing the material. Even with virtual trainings that have tests at the end a person can guess there way through them. In a classroom setting an instructor could get everyone involved and participating in the class and a person should at least pick up some pieces of knowledge even by accident.
3.The biggest negative for virtual training is employees learning absolutely nothing. In my office there is a group of people who cheat their way through all mandatory trainings. One person takes the training and prints out their answers then gives copies to everyone else to enter into their test. The others are done in a minute or two and nothing is learned.
Virtual training is a good tool but relying on it complete would be a mistake.
Technology in the workplace has had such an impact on efficiency and has had the ability to connect us to others in a way like we've never seen before.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the problem that arises due to the prevalence of email communication amongst colleagues is the fact that many things can become lost in translation. A greater emphasis is now put on one's grammar usage and spelling, as well as the tone that tends to come across in an email communication. It's absolutely key that more training needs to be done in order to ensure that people in the workforce can learn to communicate properly in this manner.
It is a manager's duty to delegate and direct, which can come across as pushy, or insensitive over an email communication. Now, more than ever, the simple use of please and thank you is proven to go a long way over email communications when in this situation.
Grammar and spelling usage can potentially do harm to someone’s professional credibility when used improperly over email. As face to face communication is dwindling, it is possible that we have many professional relationships with people whom we have never even met. Essentially, email correspondence is the only perception of each other that we may have. It's important to put our best "virtual foot forward" in this case.
In an odd way, this modern mode of communication is causing us to get back to basics. It's important to brush up on our grammar and spelling, as well as revisit some of those grade school lessons in manners and courtesy.
@Kara, Technology is not always a great substitute for real human training. Case in point webinars developed by many companies to educate employees in Diversity, Safety etc. These seem very sterile and as we recently discussed in class more of an irritant. We are required to take these annually (its exactly the same every year) and there is 10 question quiz at the end.
ReplyDeleteI never learned any thing from these and its my belief that companies get insurance deductions if they can get all their employees to take these stupid webinars.
It was not too long ago the level of connectedness of today's world was just a prophecy. Such as having people work on projects from different places in the world or having people working from home. I remember Cell phones were big and clunky, only owned by the affluent people and even then most of them carried them in their cars and were not so mobile. I remember the first time I heard about BlackBerries, I thought they were some type of fruit, not all-purpose remote office device which would later in life become a part of me. Today, the use of wireless devices is widespread in the United States, and growing. About 71 percent of America's 108 million households own at least one cell phone, according to Forrester Research Inc. More than 25 million households now own laptop computers, according to Forrester. And 5.3 million households have wireless Internet access. This has allowed for corporation to be global and have teams that can literally be working on a project 24/7/365. In my opinion, technology has brought world together but it has come with a cost. From my own experience of working with people from many different countries, I have seen both the benefits of technology as well as the cost of being global. One of the main problems that I see with having so much technology in the workplace is that the human factor is no longer there. I have never seen or even heard the voice of many of my team members. So I have essentially no human contact with them and I only see them as an email address which in many cases has brought frustration since an email can only express your feelings so much. On the other hand projects that would have taken a month to complete we have completed in two week thanks to people in other parts of the world working continuously. I think as technology progresses we will see that that human contact barrier will slowly decrease. I know that program such as skype and Facetime by apple has made video conference a great way to fully interact with your coworkers around the world.
ReplyDeleteTechnology in the workplace has become a boon for productivity, but also for potential pitfalls. One aspect of technology that many organizations may not consider enough is the fact that with advanced technology comes a new type of threat.
ReplyDeleteFor many companies, being on the cutting edge of technological trends is competitive advantage in the marketplace. However, focusing solely on implementing new technologies, without having the resources to protect and secure those technologies, is a huge mistake. As a simple example, consider a small business that has a warehouse to store and ship materials out of. Employees in the warehouse want to take advantage of WiFi technology in order to make their daily processes more efficient by connecting to their company's network via smart phones and tablet PCs. Without a proper understanding of how WiFi technology works, it's possible that the decision makers may simply bring a wireless router online without researching how to go about protecting the network. For a hacker or anybody wishing to disrupt the company's operations, an open, unencrypted wireless network would be a dream come true. Anybody with a wireless network card could log into the network and, with a little know-how, work their way into various terminals and obtain sensitive internal data.
Responsible companies should not only invest in relevant technology, but they should also invest in complementary security packages for that technology.
I agree with what BK wrote. It is so interesting that as soon as a great technology is created, hackers will try and find a way to hack into it. However another aspect that organizations now have to consider is monitoring employees. Technology does come with a price, a double edge sword. For all the productivity that is brought with technology, business must spend even more money on monitoring and safeguarding the technology. So in the end business must not only spend more money to receive the technology but also spend money to make sure it runs efficiently.
ReplyDeleteAlso, technology comes at a cost to employees as well. Employees are not expected to see and do more because of technology. Because workplace technology is happening so quickly, it is easy to become overloaded with information.
In conclusion technology is definitely a blessing and a curse.
My perspective is a little different regarding this topic because I work for a fairly large church. I first have to say that it amazes me that people are surprised that a church even has caller ID. Technology plays a huge part in what we do everyday and touches every aspect of it. I agree with MaengSamiAM in that there is a cost to go with it.
ReplyDeleteWe purchased a database 2 yrs ago that is web-based and supports multiple campuses (we have 13 different locations), or old database was not only server based but we had to have a separate application for each campus! So of course the new database was a favorably received.
Along with that came a lot of issues and many included our legal department. For example, being a non-profit, we have volunteers that help in administrative roles. Because of the ability to access name, address, phone number and email from any computer at any time - unsupervised, we had to create a process that includes a Confidentiality and an Acceptable Usage Policy for every person with access to this database; as well as running weekly reports by each department showing activity for each volunteer to deter anyone from any unethical behavior. With this comes the question of "This is my church, don't you trust me." It's no longer just a matter of trust, but because of what can happen with Technology it is now a matter of liability.
I am heading off to law school this upcoming fall once my MBA finished, with that being the case I have been sitting in on a fair number of trials. I have noticed a drastic technology change in the court room. This past week I have been sitting in on a massive $100million+ trial over two energy companies suing over a partnership disagreement. Both sides have have between 8-12 lawyers working on the case. The computer networking on either side is pretty amazing, each attorney has an ipad or a laptop where he can access all of the files pertaining to the case at any point. This has greatly reduced the amount paper required, which in turn related to costs in the long run. It also allows everything to be perfectly organized and documents can be added and accessed by all the members of the particular side. They are currently using a Version wireless router that provides a miniature network along with internet access and security from others access information on the network.
ReplyDeleteThere are also a few applications for the ipad and other devises that provide an easy way to search through particular laws and older cases. This allows them to quickly find what they need to get something overturned while they have their window of opportunity. So now technology provides a competitive advantage, on top of increasing productivity and organization.
And thinking a bit more, most lawyers that are the primary litigators of a case tend to be older, some of them in their 60-70's. When you reach this age group people become less willing to adapt new strategies and techniques which in this particular case would be technology. If we follow those assumptions then we might find an increase in younger attorneys becoming more successful because of their comfort level working with and using technology to their advantage.
ReplyDeleteAs many of the previous bloggers have posted, SAP is very prolific in industries, especially large-scale operations that need have their business functions tightly-integrated. This interwoven relationship results in the real-time data exchange bridging the gap that previously took place when data/communication handoffs took time, were unclear, or misunderstood. I have made my whole career centered around my SAP expertise. I started my career as a software safety engineer and after a few years, I craved a career change. Therefore, I took an SAP class and quickly thereafter, gained a new career in the IT department of a Fortune 500 company configuring SAP. I made another job change as a manufacturing engineer and the reason I got the job can be summarized in three letters: SAP. What amazes me is how many people around me are resistant to adopting the change that took place with our company's implementation of SAP. My perception is that I have continued to progress up the career ladder largely because I have been identified as an expert in SAP. As stated by previous bloggers, anyone in the company who readily adopts change and takes to new technology like a "duck to water" will likely progress faster in their career ambitions than those who don't. I have seen this first-hand myself. At all salary levels, those who have shown their competency and ease at using SAP have done better in their respective career paths than those who haven't.
ReplyDeleteTechnology at work place is an interesting topic for me to share my perspectives as a biotechnology student.
ReplyDeleteAs far as lab experiments are conducted , we work on very high tech instruments, which costs almost thousands of dollars. There is intensive reasearch going in the field of applied biotechnolgy to study the metabolic pathways of various diseases .The research is using various simple instruments like micropipettes, test tubes to complex instruments like pcr machines , high definition microscopes to spectrophotometers.
The technology in our university for that matter any university is striving to attain best instuments to attain positive results of our research without contamination.
Technology plays a vital role in field of Biotechnology , especially the research part. Without the instruments like micropipptes, autoclave machines, chemicals no research can be done . Another important software technology we use is tools in the bioinformatics , where are all the previous and on going research journals are also stored . Using these data bases , the current research we do is made very simple.
When thinking of technology in the workplace it’s important to see what companies are implementing to cut costs and even become greener. In the firm I interned at last year I noticed some of the things they previously implemented to become greener and cut costs. The firm moved from using paper to almost paperless by making all of our workpapers electronic files that we transferred between our laptops and the final product was kept as an electronic file on a program specifically designed for our company. Also, many companies are implementing more efficient servers that run cooler and use less energy to run them. If anyone has information on how some companies are implementing tablets or ipads into the workplace, I would like to hear about it and if anyone thinks it’s an effective or smart thing to do with all the distractions they may bring.
ReplyDelete