Information Technology (IT) has revolutionized the individual activities and the business processes that are followed. IT is involved in almost every activity that is done in the present times. Be it a simple household chore or a complex business decision, IT has a significant role in all the areas. There are various components and features that are associated with IT and it has its own set of advantages and disadvantages. There is a continuous improvement and advancement that is being done in the field of IT to enhance and maintain its value. The essay critically analyzes the various aspects of IT that are present.
Information Technology (IT) is the process of using the systems in order to organize, manage, store and retrieve the information. There are primarily three components that are involved in IT which include software, hardware and networks. Software is the program that is used to accomplish a particular task or activity and is written in the form of a code or a set of procedures. Hardware is the component or part of the system on which the software is executed and hardware is the physically available entity such as computer systems and accessories. Networks are the mediums through which the information travels from one place to the other.
One of the recent and most widely used components of IT is the Management Information System (MIS). These are the IT and Information Systems (IT) that is used in the business organizations in order take decisions effectively. There are business activities that are done in the firms that may be simple to extremely complex in nature. There are several decisions that are required to be taken in order to accomplish these activities successfully. MIS are the systems that enable the management in the organization to gather all the information together for effective planning and organization. These systems are used in the organizations of various sectors such as finance, marketing, retail, e-commerce, travel & tourism and many others. For instance, in case of the industry of travel & tourism, the information that the organization works in to includes travel itineraries, booking details, member details and many more. Also, there are third party entities that are associated with the industry as well that increases the volume and variety of information. The complexity of planning and decision making also increases accordingly. MIS therefore enable the managers to take these decisions quickly, easily and effectively.
There are several categories of MIS that are used and installed in the organizations. Some of these MIS that are widely used are as listed below.
Sales are an important activity that is followed in almost all of the organizations. There are also huge chunks of information that are associated with the sales operations that are executed in a particular organization. Sales Management Systems are the MIS that automatically manage and organize the sales related data of an organization. There are several strategic and competitive benefits that are associated with these systems in terms of easy storage and retrieval of information along with the convenient management and prevention of associated errors such as replication and duplication of data, loss of information and likewise. Sales Management Systems shall therefore used in almost all the industries.
Budgeting systems are the MIS that are used to manage the budgeting activities that are followed in the organization. Budgets that are associated with the organizations are of significant importance as it is not a good practice to incorrectly allocate the organization costs. There are several strategic and competitive benefits that are associated with these systems in terms of easy storage and retrieval of information along with the convenient management and prevention of associated errors such as replication and duplication of data, loss of information and likewise.
Inventory of the organization is required to be managed and organized in a correct manner. Also, information associated with inventory status shall also be maintained all throughout. There are several strategic and competitive benefits that are associated with these systems in terms of easy storage and retrieval of information along with the convenient management and prevention of associated errors such as replication and duplication of data, loss of information and likewise. These systems are used commonly in almost all the organization for effective management of the inventories.
These systems are used for managing and organizing several reports that are associated with the organization. Reporting is an effective tool in order to understand the status associated with the projects and the progress of the organization as a whole. These systems have the ability to automatically generate and store the reports and the options of customization are also available with the same.
The world is a closely integrated platform in the present times wherein entities that are located miles apart can communicate with each other easily. Internet is the term that refers to the global computer networking system that has connected and integrated several computing resources from all across the globe on a single platform.
World Wide Web (WWW) refers to the information system which is used on the Internet for the integration and linking of several components of the same. It allows the users to perform various activities on the Internet including the search operation and likewise.
Earlier, organizations used to deal with limited data and information and the same was stored and managed through manual processes. However, in spite of the lesser volume of information, there were several errors that used to emerge in terms of incorrect processing of data, loss of data, duplication of data and many more. In the present times, it is not possible to manage huge volumes of data through manual operations. Databases are the data repositories that are used for the data storage and there are database management systems that are used for the storage along with the processing of the information that is stored in the database.
Business Intelligence (BI) is a broad concept that includes numerous processes and activities such as analysis of data, data mining, data warehousing, online analytical processing and many more. BI is a significant component of IT that plays an important role in the present day organizations. The information that is related with the organizations is required to be carefully analyzed and studies for understanding the details along with the revelation of various patterns and statistics associated with it. There are BI tools that are available for the purpose that are being used and installed in a lot many organizations in the current times. Data warehousing is also a significant BI concept that is being applied for efficient data storage and processing of the data operations (Peslak, 2012).
Object Oriented Technologies are the also one of the prime components and developments in the field of IT. These technologies and practices make use of the objects which comprise of the data that is used for the particular code or program. Objects are the real-world entities that allow the object oriented programming languages to have a closer context with the real-world.
These technologies have brought a major transformation in the field of application and program development as these allow the programmers to write the codes for a particular scenario or a case which is closer to the real-world. Also, there are several attributes that are associated with the object oriented technologies.
MIS are the information systems that are widely used for decision making in the organizations. Apart from MIS, there are Decision Support Systems (DSS) that are also widely used for decision making activities. The popularity and application of these systems is significant as these allow the organizations to take effective and quick decisions. Also, these come with several advantages for the employees and for the organization as well. The enhancement of the employee productivity along with the ease of understanding is some of the prime advantages for the employees. These systems also bring down the complexities that are associated with the DSS and ample amount of time is saved to be allocated to other useful activities (Laslo and Gurevich, 2013).
Development of an IT system is made of a number of phases that are accomplished in order to reach towards a defined goal or an end product. There is a system development lifecycle that has been defined that includes the main phases as initiation, planning, analysis, design, development, testing, implementation and closure. These phases are completed in a step by step manner and the output of one phase becomes the input for the next one in the process.
There are various tools and techniques that are defined for the system development to take place. Some of these techniques include agile system development, waterfall model, spiral model and many more. There are also automated tools that are available for carrying out the developmental activities such as Microsoft Visual Studio for developing the system in C# or Eclipse for JAVA and likewise.
E-commerce is the business process that makes use of a network which is usually the Internet for the execution of commerce related activities.
There are several business models of e-commerce that have been created which include Business to Business (B2B) model, Business to Consumer (B2C) model, Consumer to Consumer (C2C) model and Consumer to Business (C2B) model. Business to Business model is the one in which the electronic commerce that takes place is between the two business organizations or parties. Similarly, C2C e-commerce model is the one in which the buyer and the seller are consumers. Consumer to Business is the one in which the seller is the consumer and the buyer is the business firm or organization.
There are several trends that have emerged in the field of e-commerce such as development of portals in the form of web site or web application. The latest trend is the use of social media marketing in the field of e-commerce. There are social media accounts that have been created and are used by the e-commerce companies for marketing of their products online.
There are a number of ethical issues that are associated with IT that may have an impact on the properties of information. Some of these ethical issues include the violation of information privacy and passing the same to an unauthorized entity without the consent of the owner of the information. There are also ethical issues that have been observed in the field of system development.
These practices result in the violation of the Intellectual Properties and it is therefore required to develop measures to put a check on the same. The employees along with the managers should be provided with the ethical trainings for avoiding such ethical issues. They should be made aware of the consequences that may result out from the same.
There are various computer related crimes that have also been observed in the field of IT and most of these crimes are associated with information security attacks. There are various information security attacks that have been observed in terms of loss and breaching of data, network security attacks and many more. These crimes violate the properties of information such as its confidentiality and privacy.
Digital Forensics is a branch of science that deals in to the investigation of a cyber crime by making sure that the digital evidences are identified. Digital Forensics has made it easier to find solve many of the computer related crimes.
Conclusion
Information Technology (IT) is the process of using the systems in order to organize, manage, store and retrieve the information. There are primarily three components that are involved in IT which include software, hardware and networks. Information Technology (IT) has revolutionized the individual activities and the business processes that are followed. IT is involved in almost every activity that is done in the present times. Be it a simple household chore or a complex business decision, IT has a significant role in all the areas. Management Information Systems (MIS) are the IT and Information Systems (IT) that is used in the business organizations in order take decisions effectively. There are numerous MIS that have been designed and implemented such as Budgeting Systems, Sales Management Systems, Management Reporting Systems and likewise. There are several advancements that have been made in the field of IT and the process is a continuous process. The components such as databases, data warehouses, business intelligence, Big Data, decision support systems and many more are being widely used and also there are innovations beings done in the same areas. There are certain ethical and security issues that are associated with IT and can be solved with the aid of adequate measures. There are prevention, detection and control measures that have been designed in order to put a check on such issues.
References
Laslo, Z. and Gurevich, G. (2013). A Simulation-Based Decision Support System for Managing Information Technology Project Portfolios. International Journal of Information Technology Project Management, 4(2), pp.1-17.
Peslak, A. (2012). Information Technology Project Management and Project Success. International Journal of Information Technology Project Management, 3(3), pp.31-44.
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