Discuss about the Information Technology on Business Operations.
The concern of the present report is to identify the impact of information technology (IT) on one of the leading organizations of telecommunication – Telstra. Therefore, following the concern, the paper would identify and evaluate significance of IT on sustaining the business operations of Telstra. Additionally, the report will attempt to understand the advantages and risks related with the implementation of IT in business. Henceforth, to understand the possible risks and advantages, the report will investigate in what ways and upon whom a business organization such as Telstra uses IT.
Prior to understand the significance and impact of IT in the business operations of Telstra, it is essential to denote that Telstra is considered as the largest enterprise for telecommunication and media. Therefore, it is easy to comprehend that the fundamental operations of Telstra chiefly depends on information technology. The organization is distinguished as the finest builder and operator of telecommunication networks and various media and entertainment products like mobile and internet access (Liu et al. 2013). According to Piotrowicz and Cuthbertson (2014), the role of IT is to unify and integrate telecommunications. On the other hand, the function of IT is regarded as one of the pillars of economic development for acquiring competitive advantage on national level. Henceforth, Telstra’s fundamental operation, which is to provide telecommunication access to the society, is understandably dependent upon the premise of Information technology.
Telstra presently offers network application based softwares along with IP networks such as unified communications, cloud and industry solution and cable network to SMEs and individual customers. Therefore, it is understandable that from designing networks and establishing solutions for the network related problems to maintain flexible communication among the internal stakeholders, IT plays a dominant role in the operations of Telstra (Liu et al. 2013).
In terms of sustaining the business operations for a long time, Telstra believes in improving its operational resilience, commercial sustainability along with corporate social responsibility. Organizations of Australia like Telstra have started to use IT as an apt instrumental solution for alleviating every kind of internal operational challenge. Most importantly, with the help of IT, telecommunication organizations like Telstra can maintain a proper flow of communication with their internal and external stakeholders. According to Drnevich and Croson (2013), business sustainability of an organization largely depends on how the organization is addressing their stakeholders’ needs through regular conversation.
In terms of business survival for Telstra, it seems that Information Technology works as the lifeline. It is interesting to note that Telstra itself is a company that makes business on the role of IT. However, for a business organization like Telstra, implementation of Information and communication technology has been a requirement at the initial stage. It can be stated that for implementing IT, Telstra would have required a large amount of investment for acquiring equipments and their installation, a particular design and a training session for the employees (Chae et al. 2014). Considering Telstra’s service to provide telecommunication solutions to small and medium sized enterprise, it is understandable that a large amount of investment is required for implementing IT facilities. For example, installation of IT tools like cable and network testers, cable tools and butt sets are found to be essential for the basic activities of Telstra. On the other hand, to accomplish the functions of the implemented IT equipments, it is essential to hire experienced employees or to provide adequate training. In this case, an organization like Telstra needs to prioritize providing hands-on Instructor led training (Workman 2014). For the business purpose of Telstra, training for providing solutions on network access problems is necessary. Therefore, from implementation to training, an enterprise like Telstra needs huge investments and potential infrastructures.
For the considered organization, the functions of IT are required equally for both internal and external stakeholders. Telstra’s service is predominantly oriented with network service, which is impossible to accomplish without the IT infrastructure. Therefore, the use of IT infrastructure is required for the employees of a telecommunication organization like Telstra, whose basic work is related with network service (Taylor 2015). For example, an operational IT infrastructure namely Integrated Operations Management is convenient to gather, monitor and analyze information from multiple internal sources of an organization. At the same time, it helps in managing multiple vendors and maintaining complex and hybrid technological environments of large head organizations.
On the other side, Telstra’s suppliers who play a strong role in achieving the organization’s agenda for sustainability are encouraged by the organization to reduce environmental impacts. Side by side, Telstra prefers to provide online support to their customers. For example, with the help of IT Telstra has already introduced smart application like Smart Home and SIM only plans for their clients. Therefore, it is understandable that the infrastructure of IT is used extensively to make necessary communication with the internal stakeholders and monitoring their performance along with supporting the customers with several applications (Argenti 2015).
It is needless to contemplate that IT has become an integral part of almost every modern business operations. From increasing communication to develop competitive advantages, IT infrastructure is a complete solution for a prosperous business. Predominantly, IT infrastructure supports in maintaining streamlined work flow and in increasing efficiency in a business, which leads to increase the profit margin. For an organization like Telstra, benefit of IT can be categorized among the following –
Implementation of IT infrastructure in business helps in less amount of time for accomplishing a task. At the same time, with the growing development in the ground of technical innovation, installation of several IT instruments have become relatively affordable. Therefore, it is indicative of the fact that the biggest benefit of IT is, it saves production cost and saves an impressive amount of time. In terms of consequence, organizations achieve satisfying revenue margin through increasing productive amount (Taylor 2015). For an organization like Telstra, IT infrastructure not only helps in reaching and addressing their clients on time but also support the organization in creating loyal customers.
Productivity is determined by communication or in other words, flexible communication fosters the decision-making process in a business and maximizes a company’s volume of expansion in new territories. Nowadays, electronically based communication systems are also utilized for disseminating business information along with operational routines (Dinev et al. 2013). Therefore, in an organization like Telstra, IT equipments help in sending business reports or necessary business information to keep the employee well updated on any critical business projects. With the help of IT and ICT equipments, Teltra’s employees can stay well informed about new applications available for the clients and customer feedback regarding the company’s service.
Work remotely
It is probably one of the most significant facilities of IT tools that it helps employees and clients to get easy access to an organization’s electronic networks. Easy access of an organization’s network helps in working in anytime from anywhere, which indicates growth in productivity as well as a fruitful and satisfying employee-customer relationship (Popovi? and Jakli? 2015). For Telstra, who desires to provide the facility to access network solution from anywhere to their customers, this particular beneficial feature of IT equipments seems to be more of an essential requirement (Willcocks 2013). For example, Telstra already uses its websites and numerous digital applications like Smart Home to help their clients, which has helped the organization to earn a huge success.
It is unfortunate to denote that instead of having the capability to address every significant area of business efficiently, use of IT carries several risk related to privacy, confidentiality and security.
Risk related to privacy and confidentiality
It has been discussed that with the help of IT equipments, both customers and employees can easily access to an organization’s network access. It paves the way for criminal IT threats like altering data for illegal benefit, stealing sensitive information and illegally breaking network privacy. On the other hand, due to malicious design of software computer operations can get disrupted and even create incorrect processing and disposal of important data (Borghoff and Pareschi 2013). Therefore, for Telstra there are several possibility that their technological operations and could fail due to software malfunctioning. Most significantly, Telstra’s implementation of several eye-catchy digital applications and the facility to get easy access to the company network can provoke the rival organizations to hack their system and can copy significant business data. On the other hand, there is the issue of virus, which can let any of the company’s secret computer code to get copied and spread from one system to another and bringing several disruptions to the operation systems (Aykin 2016).
Most significantly, as the productivity of Telstra chiefly depends upon IT equipments, any sudden malfunction or disruption can disturb the entire operation or production process. Therefore, probability of functional disruption is constant for an organization like Telstra (Aykin 2016).
Considering the possible risks, it is significant to identify convenient monitoring and maintaining systems for IT equipments. For a telecommunication organization like Telstra, use of EPMC (Equipment performance monitoring service) can prove convenient (Jussila et al. 2014). To monitor whether any disruption related to IT is existing in the operation management, large head business organization like Telstra could effectively use EPMC that helps to deliver value to the operations through the process of producing validated information about all the technical equipments. (Bloom et al. 2014) Moreover, with the help of this service, an organization can more efficiently run their operational and production related process and at the same time can scheduled IT related activities and track the operating performances.
Conclusion
It has been understood from the above business report that IT has become an essential requirement for the modern day business operations as it helps in consuming less time and saves cost. Therefore, it has been identified that impressive amount of productivity comes with the use of IT. Alongside, IT infrastructure supports an organization like Telstra to maintain a flexible communication with their internal and external stakeholders. The report has pointed out that the considered organization Telstra uses IT for providing easy access to network solutions to their clients. However, considering possible risks related to IT, it can be recommended that, it is required to adopt the framework of Risk IT that is a set of guiding principles, help in effectively managing IT risks.
However, prior to use guiding frameworks like Risk It, it is essential initially to identify and assess the risk factors. Furthermore, it is to suggest that enterprises like Telstra should review risk management systems after implementing them and should develop several plans to acquire responses.
References
Argenti, P.A., 2015. Corporate communication. McGraw-Hill Higher Education.
Aykin, N. ed., 2016. Usability and internationalization of information technology. CRC Press.
Bloom, N., Garicano, L., Sadun, R. and Van Reenen, J., 2014. The distinct effects of information technology and communication technology on firm organization. Management Science, 60(12), pp.2859-2885.
Borghoff, U.M. and Pareschi, R. eds., 2013. Information technology for knowledge management. Springer Science & Business Media.
Chae, H.C., Koh, C.E. and Prybutok, V.R., 2014. Information Technology Capability and Firm Performance: Contradictory Findings and Their Possible Causes. Mis Quarterly, 38(1), pp.305-326.
Dinev, T., Xu, H., Smith, J.H. and Hart, P., 2013. Information privacy and correlates: an empirical attempt to bridge and distinguish privacy-related concepts. European Journal of Information Systems, 22(3), pp.295-316.
Drnevich, P.L. and Croson, D.C., 2013. Information technology and business-level strategy: Toward an integrated theoretical perspective. Mis Quarterly, 37(2), pp.483-509.
Jussila, J.J., Kärkkäinen, H. and Aramo-Immonen, H., 2014. Social media utilization in business-to-business relationships of technology industry firms. Computers in Human Behavior, 30, pp.606-613.
Liu, Z., Paul, M., Telekom, D., Kunze, R. and Mach Chen, H., 2013. Network Working Group Simon Delord (editor), Telstra Internet Draft Raymond Key (editor), Huawei Category: Standard Track Frederic Jounay, Orange CH Expires: August 2013 Yuji Kamite, NTT Communications.
Piotrowicz, W. and Cuthbertson, R., 2014. Introduction to the special issue information technology in retail: Toward omnichannel retailing. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 18(4), pp.5-16.
Popovi?, A. and Jakli?, J., 2015. Understanding the Influence of Business Intelligence Systems on Information Quality: The Importance of Business Knowledge. Business Intelligence: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications, p.96.
Taylor, P., 2015. The importance of information and communication technologies (ICTs): An integration of the extant literature on ICT adoption in small and medium enterprises.
Willcocks, L., 2013. Information management: the evaluation of information systems investments. Springer.
Workman, M., 2014. New media and the changing face of information technology use: The importance of task pursuit, social influence, and experience. Computers in Human Behavior, 31, pp.111-117.
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