IT Professional Presentation Essay Example for Free

IT Professional Presentation Essay Presentations are meant to be professional with a lot of effort required in the structuring of speech and the assurance of putting across the right message. Professionals in any field or walk of life need to have a good speech which would make them better presenters and hence a noticeable being among all the other employees. An organization has hundreds and thousand and sometimes even more than that employee in number. To make oneself noticeable in the eyes of the one that matter, makes a lot of difference in the career growth. Hard work is something that everyone does but few are those who are able to present it in a manner that enables the top officials to notice you. There are many ways to present and presentations are becoming increasingly common in today’s world. PowerPoint and Flash are the most utilized of all but written means of assistance and even plain verbal speech is also presentation. All these means of presenting are justified depending on the situations and the matter to be presented. Hence, it is not the material that matters to a large extent but it’s what you say right at the right time is what matters. Introduction Information system can be any organised combination of people, hardware, software, communication networks, and data resources that collects, transforms, and disseminates information in an organisation. Like any other system operates within an environment, information system and technology are very important in contemporary business, because they have become a significant component for success in any organisation, such as university, healthcare centre and company. However these are the most important and vital in internet business area because it cannot be managed without information system and technology. In addition internet business can increase their sales and profits by implicating efficient and effective e-commerce which is one of major parts of information system. There are big names that are involved with the IT industry such as the Amazon. com which is solely an internet based company. Other multinationals such as McDonalds are also involved in it despite being a fast food organization. Brief information regarding the two organizations are as follows. Critical Analysis of the Presentations ‘Things they are Achangin-1’ talk about the computer and Information Technology details. It starts off with telling the memory capacity of a computer. The different memories and the capacities that a computer and its hardware has, is explained in the presentation. Along with that it talks about the computer networking and the usage of broadband. It had become increasingly famous and popular in the current years and most of the people in the world have it. ‘Things they are Achangin-2’ on the other hand talks about other energy sources such as batteries and cars and how their mechanism works. These two mentioned sources have also become increasingly important over their years for day to day life. Along with that it has compared their mechanical sources with human body and mind and has talked about the structure of a robotic body. Delivery Channel Strategy ‘Delivery Channel Strategy’ defines the objective of delivery channel which are Projecting and representing the brand defending and developing the active consumer base, obtaining new customers and meeting essential service requirements. It also talks about the benefits of branches, which branches are used more for financial services and why. It explains self servicing and explains the benefits of automated machines which empower the customers. It takes into account the different product used by the financial institutions and their usage. Key Implications of Delivery Strategies In order to have an effective delivery strategy, one needs to take into account all the aspects that come before that as well in order to execute the plan in the most effective manner possible. The following delivery process is explained with an example of Amazon. com, the online trading place. a) Goods, products, ecommerce solution: It started off as a book store with an online presence but later on it kept on adding products in its portfolio and now they have different categories in which they divide their products into such as ‘Books, Music and Movies’, ‘Clothing and Accessories’, ‘Computer Office’, ‘Consumer Electronics’, ‘Food and Household’, ‘Health and Beauty’, ‘Home and Garden’, ‘Kids and Toys’, ‘Sports and Fitness’, ‘Tools and Automotives’, ‘Bargains’ and ‘Gifts and List’. There are further bifurcations within these categories as well which offers further variety to the customers. There services are divided into the categories of ‘Make Money’, ‘For the Community’, ‘For Developers’, ‘For Advertisers’ and ‘Partner Services’. .A9. com caters to the information content requirement which is a search engine present directly on the Amazon. com. (Amazon, 2007). b) Performance and services: The existence of the website over this long period of time indicates its efficiency and the level of customer satisfaction. The website is very well put together so that the customer can easily find their way through to their desired destination. â€Å"Amazon. com, BN. com, and Half. com aren’t getting any complaints at all because they are very simple to use and to understand. Each of these web sites are made for the computer illiterate or just plain lazy† (B2C e-commerce design and performance for Amazon. com, BN. com, Half. com, n. d. ). c) Personalization: The site lay out of the website is also user friendly and it takes no time to find where one wants to go unlike the complicated sites which are hard to browse. It offers the customer to personalize by offering a shopping cart just like an actual shopping mall to create a sense of personalization. They have many products and services and â€Å"different categories of all their items. They also have the option to make â€Å"Your Store,† this is where they store all the information that you like the best and what products you are most interested in† (B2C e-commerce design and performance for Amazon. com, BN. com, Half. com, n. d. ). This gives a sense of individuality to the customers wanting them to come back for a visit. d) Communities and Look and Feel: Amazon. com also offers chat forums for the customers in order to discuss their views and opinions. This is also one reason for the customers to visit the website. ‘Internet Chat Headset Forum’ is one of the examples of their chat forums and virtual customer online communities. The storefront of Amazon. com has been rated high as it offers a number of varieties on the page and also provides clear layout for the customer to assess where they are required to go. e) Incentives: Amazon. com offers different incentives to the customers such as bargains of Friday Sales, Today’s Deals and many more. It offers auctions and personal accounts to give the customers a sense of individuality and personalization encouraging them to visit more often. f) Security Reliability For such sites security is utmost important and therefore it can be said that â€Å"Security and Privacy Policy for these are very well put together and are very private† and one has to â€Å"go through various checks and double checks for e-mail and password verifications. This ensures that the website company and you have the right passwords and e-mail addresses for your privacy and protection. They also have protects programming on their sites to ensure that no one can get you password, e-mail address, and most important your credit card number† (B2C e-commerce design and performance for Amazon. com, BN. com, Half. com, n. d. ). g) Successful achievement One of the many highlighted features of the website is that very recently â€Å"Amazon. com is to Webcast Investor Conference Presentation Morgan Stanley Technology Conference† (Business News, 2007) which is considered to be a huge achievement for the organization along with earning million of dollars of revenue. Another one of its achievements could be the introduction of software called the Amazon S3â„ ¢ which is â€Å"a simple storage service that offers software developers a highly scalable, reliable, and low-latency data storage infrastructure at very low costs† (Amazon Web Services Launches Amazon S3, a Simple Storage Service for Software Developers, 2005). Ethics and Professionalism in the ICT discipline ‘Ethics and Professionalism in the ICT discipline’ talks about the importance of the code of ethics in the professional environment not for one’s career but for the sustainability of its moral values. It describes Ethics as Doing good, Not doing bad, Not screwing people, Only screwing the competition, Letting the competition screw you, Doing things right, Doing the right thing. Key Implications These key implications of Ethics in IT are explained with respect to the example of Amazon. com. For such sites security is utmost important and therefore it can be said that â€Å"Security and Privacy Policy for these are very well put together and are very private† and one has to â€Å"go through various checks and double checks for e-mail and password verifications. This ensures that the website company and you have the right passwords and e-mail addresses for your privacy and protection. They also have protects programming on their sites to ensure that no one can get you password, e-mail address, and most important your credit card number† (B2C e-commerce design and performance for Amazon. com, BN. com, Half. com, n. d. ). Risk Assessment of Ethics in IT Despite the existence of internet over the years, it has still not been able to gain trust regarding the transactions online. Amazon. com along with other organization based online for selling face the challenge of assurance of security to its customers. As for Amazon. com, it failed to provide trust in regard of security to e-commerce project because they did not concern about technical risks. Despite the presence of a huge customer base, a lot of potential customers are hesitant to buy from amazon. com because of this particular reason. However, there is a long procedure regarding the security of credit cards and its personal information which is utilized by many websites present today. â€Å"Many sites that accept credit cards claim they are secure when they have an encryption certificate. This is where you can see the padlock symbol at the bottom of the screen. The encryption certificate encodes the message with the credit card details when it is sent and the organization issuing the certificate (e,g, Thawte or Verisign) verify the business before they issue it. (E-commerce Security, n. d. ). Amazon. com follows the same long procedure of ensuring that the customer feels safe but even then there is a lot of chance of stealth of the information and its misutilization might lead to disastrous losses to an individual. This is the fear that stops the potential customers from entering into the market of internet. â€Å"If credit card numbers are stored on a server they are still potential targets for a hacking attack. Afferent Media protects its server with anti virus and firewall systems. Its ultimate defense though is that it does not store any credit card numbers† (E-commerce Security, n. d. ). Hence, despite the effort, due to technical risk involved Amazon. com is facing the same threat as many other online retailers. Although Amazon. com has developed a trustworthy image over the years but when it comes to monetary losses people are hesitant to take risk as the loss incurred might get too huge to counter. This technical risk can however be countered in order to gain the potential customers that are hesitating at the moment. This can be countered if â€Å"transactions are carried out in real time, in just the same way as an EFTPOS machine. The message is encoded and sent to the bank, if the card passes the checks then funds are transferred directly to the vendor. This is just like when you buy petrol or shop in a supermarket. The vendor swipes your card in and EFTPOS machine, they do not store the card details. † (E-commerce Security, n. d. ). Like every weakness, if this factor is also addressed in its early stages it might not even classify as a problem and may be included in one of the challenges but the more Amazon. com delays it, the more it might lead to disaster and reduction of customer base. It has the advantage that the solution has already been identified, therefore the company just needs to incorporate this procedure in its security e-commerce procedure and keep proper checks and balances over a period of time and the job is done. Once the authenticity of the procedure is verified, it would not be hard for customer to develop trust in the online services. Despite the overall success of the organization, there are still factors that it needs to counter before the issues convert into real threat to the existence of the organization. The security factor is always vital in e-commerce as no customers would want to risk their monetary gains for shopping online. Lean Thinking ‘Lean Thinking’ is a presentation which defines the importance of customers with the help of practical examples taken from different scenarios. It also takes into account the impact of value on customer’s choice and the importance of value in a product. Key Implications McDonalds is a world wide known brand and hence it is famous and loved all around the world for its customer hospitality. A fast food chain, so customer friendly has also made use of the IT sources which is explained as further. The company is a fast food chain across the world known by the name of McDonalds. It is world renowned and is among the top most fast food chains across the globe. It has different kinds of fast foods in its menu ranging from rapid on-the-go burgers to healthy breakfasts and other food items. The organization is known for its quality and variety in food across the globe along with paying its full due to the corporate and social responsibility to the members of the society. Our organization not only is concerned about regular people who are health or weight conscious but also make sure that people with certain individual problems are also given attention to. The entire nutrition information is available on its website and can be completely relied on as it is taken from â€Å"from testing conducted in accredited laboratories, published resources, or from information provided from McDonald’s suppliers. The nutrition information is based on standard product formulations and serving sizes. All nutrition information is based on average values for ingredients from McDonald’s suppliers throughout the U. S. and is rounded to meet current US FDA NLEA guidelines† (McDonalds – USA, 2006). Despite of enjoying the top most notches in most of the countries we are present in; it is made sure that the organization does not lag in its due responsibility towards its customers, employees or the society it caters to which is evident by the brochure of Corporate Responsibility by McDonalds. This brochure is known as ‘The McDonalds USA Corporate Responsibility Brochure’ and another third worldwide corporate responsibility report has been published recently in 2006. It has the ability to adapt to country to country environment and culture. It pays utmost importance to kids and their meals and therefore because of that reason we have specialized meal for children as well. These meals are set with kids preferences in mind and offers incentive such as toy gifts which children can enjoy along with their respective meals. Capabilities and Potential with Risk Assessment McDonalds is known for its customer service and for increasing indulgence in the technology sector as well. McDonalds has some of Information technology involved in its procedures as well as to offer to the customers. As a Manager it is very important to be well equipped and well informed regarding the knowledge of the on-going dynamics in the information technology sector of the country. The advancement of the organization in the information technology sector is indicated by the fact that it offers one of the most novel technologies of the information system which is the McDonald’s Wireless Connectivity. It offers Wi-Fi service to its customers so that they can even bring their work to McDonalds along with enjoying a good meal. Its not just limited to United States which is one of the most technologically equipped country of the world but 7,000 outlets around the globe. We believe in giving the best to our customers and Wi-Fi is a part of it as â€Å"We believe in bringing you innovative and convenient services that enhance your McDonalds restaurant visit, and Wi-Fi is a perfect example. As McDonalds continues to deliver fast and friendly food service at more than 30,000 convenient locations around the world, you can now enjoy the possibility of staying connected with friends, family and co-workers† (McDonalds Wireless Connectivity, 2006). Apart from this, our organization has even stepped in introducing a technology that would bring into use the real time network used by huge and well-known places such as Wal-Mart. In order to manage its hardware and software in different location across the globe, it took help of the Fujitsu Philippines Incorporation to implement a system the system. The system is called Help Desk which enables in the monitoring of the inventory system and the management of the SMS and documents. Due to Help Desk the technical support service now take half the time it previously did. (McDonalds Philippines improves customer service via technology, 2007). Due to high volume of sales of McDonalds around the globe, the manual or low level storing data system is not anymore a product of efficiency for the organization. Therefore, it has moved a step forwards and â€Å"The PC POS system replaced proprietary computer registers that delivered information to in-store processors. These computers are a McDonalds restaurants black box, recording information on operations such as an individual stores total sales for the day, and the number of patties, buns, cups and other products used, and delivering it back to the McDonalds mainframe systems in Oak Brook each night over a modem connection† (Food, Folks and Forecasting, 2006). We as Managers also make use of this technology to place orders to the suppliers for replacement as well, hence making tasks easier for everyone of storing the large bulks of information everyday. The Future of Business Information System ‘The Future of Business Information System’ talks about the consultancy by Dennis Keeling. It takes into account the trends in business cycle, the types of business applications and the industry changes. It talks about different operating systems and system designs and data file structure. Key Implications of The Future of Business Information System The most upcoming trend in the future is outsourcing. Outsourcing is a trend that has recently become very popular among the multi-million and multi-billion organizations around the world. Outsourcing â€Å"often refers to the delegation of non-core operations from internal production to an external entity specializing in the management of that operation† (Wikipedia, n. d. ). There are various functions of an organization that are not the main operations and therefore can be outsourced to other parties such as â€Å"Business segments typically outsourced include information technology, human resources, facilities and real estate management, and accounting. Many companies also outsource customer support and call center functions, manufacturing and engineering† (Wikipedia, n. d. ). There are several reasons why one would outsource their operations to an outside party, which might include the purpose of exploiting cheap labor in case of third world countries or utilizing the efficiency of specialized expertise in a particular field of work. Outsourcing might also involve reducing the cost even it effects their quality to a slight extent. IT outsourcing helps improve the efficiency of IT department as after outsourcing there is special attention given by an entire group people to only one operation, hence in return increasing its importance and therefore its efficiency. IT outsourcing might also be done due to cost reduction by utilizing brains that are willing to work for less as compared to the human resource that is present domestically. Along with a lot of benefits in outsourcing, there comes a bucket full of criticism as well. The critics believe that outsourcing reduces the quality of the operation outsourced hence reducing the overall performance of the organization. Hence, it is believed that organizations reduce their cost by compromising on their quality and exploiting cheap labor by outsourcing. On the other hand â€Å"proponents of outsourcing believe that arguing that outsourcing leads to lower product quality is pointless because if it were true, consumer demand will force firms to shift back to producing the good or service in-firm rather than out-firm† (Wikipedia, n. d. ). Risk Assessment regarding Future of IT With respect to outsourcing, the possible risk or problems that IT could face in the future are as explained further. There are different outsourcers depending to where they are located. They include three kinds that are outsourcing, offshore outsourcing and offshoring. Although these terms are used as a replacement of the other but their meaning is different from one another. Outsourcing is the allocation of an organization’s operation to another responsible party. Now the difference lies in the presence of this third party, that is, if the third party is located outside the host country, it is known as offshore outsourcing. While on the other hand, offshoring is when an operation of an organization is taken to another country without transferring control to the third party. Hence the difference is of transfer of control to another party, that is, the power remains within the organization in case of offshoring while in offshore outsourcing it is transferred to the third party. In case of IT offshore outsourcing, the main country that receives the majority deals is India due to its IT success in recent years with able IT graduates and world-renowned IT universities present in India. Different problems might occur due to the location of the outsourcer, that is, in case of offshore outsourcing, the cost of checks and balances, transportation, dealing across distances might end up being equal or surpassing the cost cut that is the purpose of outsourcing. Hence, nullifying the effect of outsourcing with the cost incurred for distant dealing. â€Å"One issue offshoring of technical services has brought more attention to is the value of education as an alleged solution to trade-related displacements† (Wikipedia, n. d. ). The foreign location of the outsources in case of offshore outsourcing and the exapanding of business globally in case of offshoring might also be subject to crticism due to the reason that it causes the host country to suffer with opportunities travelling to other countries rather than being available to others. Hence, along with certain positive outcomes, outsources is subjected to a sufficient amount of criticism as well. In order to counter the crticism, it would have to scrutinze itself and remove such drawbacks. Weaknesses in Current Information Technology Capabilities However, the McDonalds journey may be rapidly moving towards the success ladder but there are several pitfalls that have occurred in its Information System and its capabilities. For us as managers, it is very important to identify those pitfalls and rectify them as soon as possible in order to avoid any forthcoming problems or issues. The technological world is an extremely rapidly evolving environment, with information becoming obsolete after a certain period of time. Hence, it is very important for the Managers to take that into account and be on the constant guards to protect their image. Wi-Fi is a very innovative and healthy technology but in those countries that are well equipped to support this kind of technology and the citizens prefer to have it in a restaurant. As per a management’s perspective, to implement it in a country like Bangladesh or Pakistan, where there isn’t much knowledge of technology among the masses, would not only be unfeasible but also irrelevant expenditure. As for the PC POS System implemented, it does save time but being a Manager it is very important to receive the detailed information to further process it for other uses which it failed to do. â€Å"The data that is batch-dumped to the McDonalds mainframe system in Oak Brook every night doesnt offer the detail McDonalds executives needed and, worse, took as long as a week to be compiled analyzed and distributed to managers who would then order more patties, buns, etc. from McDonalds vendors†. Hence, it needs to take that into account as well. Professional Presentations Requirement of Soft Skills All the organization of such calibre are required to have high aptitude personnel in it with the presence of hard skills as well as soft skills. In order to sell your product, one has to make sure that its presentation and the its communication is up to the mark. The more the people are convinces the more is the popularity of the product or service meant to be. It is very important for a professional to possess the skills of speaking well and hiring such professional can be a tedious process but all the effort is worth it. Hiring is a very difficult process; it takes a lot of time, patience, and money. Gone were the days when management only looks for technical skills alone, now, they are more focused with soft skills referring to non technical skills of an individual. What are soft skills? According to Mannering (1998) they are considered to be harder to identify, to distinguish. Ironically, for many managers, the soft skills are the hard skills. Ask anyone who has had to manage change, deal with organizational politics, or build a disparate group of people into an effective team (Holbeche, 2006). Platinum skills are developed through training and delegation, active listening, giving and receiving feedback, and creating a motivational environment. (Topchik, 2004). Companies Who Values Soft Skills Fujitsu Here’s an excerpt from an article â€Å"Hi-tech soft skills† IT Training; Jan2007 Fujitsu Services has set up an international Management Academy, headed by Paula Graham (right), to help IT professionals brush up on their interpersonal skills As they progress up the career ladder, many IT professionals could find themselves at a crunch point. They have been hired and valued primarily for their technical and engineering abilities, but as they become more senior they will be expected to adopt more custodial and managerial responsibility over junior colleagues. But where, along the way, were they supposed to have picked up these managerial and interpersonal skills? IT giant Fujitsu Services is tackling the problem of helping the technical person be a better people manager with a new company-wide experiment in delivering soft skills training at leadership level. This programme is about raising the bar on the organization’s people management skills, adds Jeremy Hill, London-based managing director of training partner DIEU. Fujitsu employees are comprised mostly of IT professionals, yes they have all the various technical skills that needed to become one of their programmers, and they keep on giving other technical trainings in order to stay competitive and knowledgeable on diverse IT trends. And yet, management feels they lack something, they need to brush up with communication skills. Employees needed to be more effective communicators; they need to get their message across clearly with the people they are dealing with. Communication is very essential and powerful tool not everybody has the knock off communication skills, and essentially improvement on this part will have a big impact both for employees and their company.