Since You Are Starting To Contend In Commerce, You Need Desktop Management

There are few types of businesses which do not use information system technology. Even for businesses like landscaping where most work is hands on, physical and outside, the business end of your company will likely use computers. They are simply to efficient at everything from scheduling, mapping, billing and communicating to overlook them as a tool for the company. When the company grows and more computers arrive at the office, the method for handling desktop management must be considered.

The first and probably most used interconnecting use is the ubiquitous office electronic mail system. As soon as it is set up, it becomes extremely popular, and for good reason, it offers the fastest and surest communication method. And the fact that it can also eliminate a few meetings probably helps explain the popularity.

The advent of an internal electronic mail system alone can increase productivity dramatically, allowing employees to contact one another regardless of the time of day or geographic separation. A single mass email has the greatest probability of getting to a group of employees in the fastest possible way than any other. Once transmitted, each employee has the exact same information waiting to be retrieved at their convenience. Once initiated, email usually becomes almost a habit, with employees checking for information on a very regular basis. It is also possible to reduce the cost of software through the use of networks, both in discounts to the required number of copies needed for purchase. Another means of realizing savings comes in the reduction to the manpower required to install and service these programs. With capable technicians, a company can ensure that its employees have the information technology they need to do the job at the lowest costs. There are tremendous efficiencies to gain by having an individual or small group dedicated to the care and maintenance of the company information technology system. It allows the other employees to focus on their job without the distraction of installing and updating the programs they are using to do their jobs. While individual employees may feel that it would be faster for them to install their own software, the incidence of problems arising from such a course of action reveal that is not usually the case. Most of us have computers at home, so a relative skill level in dealing with hardware and software is a common enough ability, but so too is the realization that sometimes these supposedly self installing programs do not exactly pan out. The software makers do their best, but there are simply too many possible installation configurations for them to anticipate all of them, and sometimes they cause conflicts. The time it takes to correct these conflicts can cost a lot of man hours, and if they occur at the wrong time, they could cost much more.

When an employee has compatible computer setups at home and at the office, the temptation to take work home and bring the results back can be too hard to resist. This well meaning effort to give even more energy and effort to the company can also result in giving the company network malicious software that can wreak havoc on the system. Having professionals on staff to resolve these problems is a very valuable addition and can save the business from catastrophe.

When employees introduce software from home, they risk circumventing preventive efforts by the desktop management team to keep malware out of the system. It is complicated enough to fight the constant attacks from the external world of the internet. Protecting from intrusions within the firewalls and other protective measures is difficult, costly and inefficient and a bane to the technicians working hard to keep the system running.

The age of the computer has changed business in many ways, allowing the manager unprecedented span of knowledge and control over all processes relating to his business. This has allowed for the use of data and information on an unprecedented scale. The drawback is that the available data for any business can be unwieldy and it is very possible to drown the manager in information. This is the time to leverage the power of processing to control the computer via systems management software.

 

Information is the lifeblood of industry, from determining what product or service is needed to handling the myriad requirements that must all be pulled together to create them. Knowing the customer is a complicated business that is not intuitively obvious, and those who crack the code first are the most successful. Information is the key to the code, and information technology allows for its collection and analysis. As this new era of automation matures, the quest for ever greater detail in the information collected and studied grows until there comes a point where there is simply too much to effectively make sense of.

 

Given the right motivation, we can identify and collect an endless stream of facts concerning our business. There is information about the historical needs and uses of the product, what time of year it is most needed, what additions or complementary products most affect its use and so on. We can even spit details of which employee candidate pool is the most likely to successfully work in our industry and where they can be most easily found, attracted, hired and motivated. Unfortunately, we have not found a way to make the day longer or management more multitask capable than we already have. We can hire others to do parts of the business, but that in itself complicates the process and while we gain flexibility, we lose control.

 

There is no question that the greater the quantity of valuable accurate data a business has to feed into the decision making process, the more likely a correct decision will be arrived at to the benefit of the company. The problem is knowing how much data is enough, and which data is useful. A manager needs to know what data was collected and under what conditions to understand the information from it. Trying to keep track of all the individual input through his area of operational control necessarily requires precious time sacrificed from running the business.

 

The reason information systems became such an integral part of business is their ability to enhance the decision making process. When the use of the system becomes so cumbersome and time consuming that it cuts into the time a manager has to explore data and make operational decisions, it has stopped enhancing the business. The complexity of our tools is rapidly becoming more problematic than running a business without them. While there is certainly reason to expend energy training management on new tools and software, it should not continue to erode their time on a day to day basis.

 

Not surprisingly, this phenomenon is known to information system specialists, who are working feverishly to reign in the complexities of using management tools. It should also be no surprise that the solution will likely entail software designed to run or enhance the existing management tools, computers in charge of computers. This secondary iteration of control is much like the levels of management in a company, with each successive level designated to run the level below, allowing the higher levels to focus on a more strategic role.

 

Everyone who has been in business knows that it is unnecessary and counterproductive for the CEO of a major company to have to deal with every detail of daily operations. Likewise, managers need to be able to ask operational information of their management system and get the answers they need without having to personally collate the individual pieces of information necessary for their development. This is why it is essential the information be loaded into the system by all employees in a coordinated master software plan.

 

This is the ultimate purpose of and advantage to using systems management software. It keeps the onus of detailed data input and collection distributed across a workforce with the appropriate specialists. Individual employees input the data relevant to their portion of the company process.The software then executes the appropriate queries to collate the correct data to provide managers with the usable information they need in a format they can readily put to operational use.