The Impact Of Information Technology On State National Carriers, An Essay.

You are to research a real life business example of your choice and the impact of IT on that business.

Important points

1) Does your chosen business need IT?

2) Why IT is important for business survival?

3) What is required to apply IT into your chosen business? (I.e. cost, planning, designing, equipment, installation, training, etc…)

4) How does your chosen business use IT? (internally such as employees, and externally such as customers, suppliers)

5) What benefits and advantages does IT bring to your chosen business? (I.e. revenue, flexibility, reduces cost, etc….)

6) What type of risks does IT bring to your chosen business? (i.e. security, privacy, confidentiality)

7) How can your chosen business maintain and monitor IT?

Your report will be assessed on the quality of your research and report presentation. Discussion must be relevant to your chosen business. Your report is to be in the style of a business report.

You can choose a business from any of the following industries:

• Healthcare

• Food processing

• Banking and finance

• Telecommunications

• Library

• Transport

• Airlines

• Printing and publishing

• Media

• Computer gaming

• tourism

Information Technology i.e. IT for business is very crucial aspect in today’s business environment. For achieving business’ objectives, use of IT is common these days. Advanced techniques, innovative ideas could be effectively developed with the usage of information technology. This is an innovation made by science which could be used in any area of the world irrelevant to their nature, size, etc. IT is helpful in every field of the market as well as in the households too, with the use of IT many hard things are turned into very easy manner. Using machines for production, transportation through buses, trains, business through electronic gadgets, marketing over internet are some of the examples and achievements made from the use of information technology (Venkatesh, et. al., 2012). With the use of IT in transportation department, many harsh and time consuming things have turned into an easy manner. In this report, usage and impact of Information Technology over the activities of State National Carriers which is a leading transportation company in Australia will be discussed. They provide 24/7 schedule service with a promise to deliver the product/package on time (Davenport, 2013).

State National Carriers is a transportation company which is serving their customers with priority deliveries of their packages within the Australia. IT is technique or method to improve the quality of the services rendered to the public. With the usage of IT in State National Carriers, management is able to take more orders from the public than usual through electronic devices which are inventions of IT. State National Carriers have adapted IT in their business system and they have achieved big milestones. They provide a GPS tracking number to their customers to track the exact position of the product and when it will get delivered. Many big industries of Australia have tied up with State National Carriers to provide them transportation services and they have various kinds of services through which they deliver the packages (Pratt, et. al., 2012). IT has helped the organization to expand their business in almost every part of the country and customers can request to pick their packages to deliver it to desired address. State National Carriers also allows the public to hire the trucks, mini trucks, taxi truck, etc. IT has taken their business to the next level as customer can avail various facilities offered by them irrespective of the area, location, etc. Internet services, GPS tracking, order booking online, paying online for the orders, etc. are some of the products of the IT through which State National carriers have achieved higher growth (Barfield & Dingus, 2014). 

Importance of IT in business

Information Technology is the creator of innovation and innovation lead to success to business organizations. Information technology has invented many digital devices, digital services, etc. which saves the time of the consumers as well as their efforts are also being saved to reach to the service providers. IT has helped the business organizations to develop their marketing and other strategies to get more effective results (Prajogo & Olhager, 2012).

State National Carriers have adapted these technologies to serve more reliably to their customers with providing them better services. If any organization will not use IT services or products then they will be treated as outdated as per the trends of the current market environment. National Carriers uses IT services to store the relevant data in relation to the tracking ids of the packages, records of the delivered packages, scanning of the packages, etc. This helps them to save their time to update the status of every package manually whereas after scanning of the product, status is automatically gets updated. Promotion of the products and services offered by them can be posted on the official website of the company as well as social media could also be used for the promotional activities (Oliveira & Martins, 2011).

IT is required by each and every organization these days to execute their general activities in fair and effective manner. State National Carrier is transportation organization which helps the public to deliver their packages within the whole Australia and within the minimum time frame. They also help the companies to migrate from different locations to shift their office materials, etc. Facility of shifting of finished goods to store from the factory area is also provided by them (Lu & Ramamurthy, 2011).

Information Technology has taken over on all the old techniques used by the State National Carriers to store their relevant information and record keeping of services provided to the consumer, etc. The things which were done manually are to be done through computers so invention has helps the organization to learn new things and it has reduced the consumption of time as well.

Involvement of the information technology in the transportation team is also helpful in many ways for the customers. They can check the tracking status of their products sent to the destination and State National Carriers are providing the facility of delivering, booking for delivery, interstate transport, warehousing, etc. in 24/7 schedule without making any holiday and they also perform their activities on public holidays too. For managing all these activities, usage information technology is very crucial whereas performing all these activities manually will be very time consumable (Mani, et. al., 2010).

Requirement of IT in State National Carriers

IT is useful in every field of the world whether it would be service provider or services consumer, all are using information technology’s innovations. State National Carriers uses services of information technology in recording and analyzing the data of the packages taken from the consumers. They use IT for keeping the products safe and secure within the area of the organization as they deal in the food items, automotive products, paper products, etc. so storage for all these products varies as per their nature. Employees takes the orders from the customers with the all necessary details and after that package is get collected from the customer and till the delivery of the package, company provides a tracking number through which customer can analyze the approximate delivery time of the product (Stenneth, et. al., 2011).

Customers use Information Technology services in tracking their sent products through State National Carriers, they request for picking up the products from their doorstep with the use of internet services which is an innovation made under information technology.

Suppliers of the State National Carriers are also making effective use of the IT services through rendering the services as well as to deliver the packages. Suppliers receive the orders placed from the end of customer with all relevant details in the medium of prepaid payment or it could also be cash on delivery.

With the effective usage of information technology by this organization, they have expanded their business in almost every state of the Australia and they are also planning to expand their business in the other parts of the world too. Information Technology has helped them to achieve these milestones, prior using these technologies, less number of people used to deal with this organization. After adaptation of these services, many big industries tied up with for rendering transportation services to them, people also get to know about their delivery commitment on time at cheaper rates (Hemmatfar, et. al., 2010).

Ultimately using these technologies helps the organization to increase their revenues with the increasing number of consumers. Using information technology also helps in reducing the costs of promoting the business’ new products and services. Sudden change of the methods of performing the activities could bring challenges in front of the employees of the organization. To improve the efficiency of the business, adaptation of the information technology within the business premises is very necessary. For instance, State National Carriers uses manual methods of booking of orders from the consumers and warehousing services are also recorded manually. On the other hand, they are using advanced techniques to perform the same activities. Chances of error, time consumption, cost consumption, etc. will be high in the case of manual work whereas all these measures could be saved with the effective usage of information technology services.

Usage of IT in State National Carriers

Using information technologies bring advantages for the business as well as it also brings risks and threats for the same business too. Confidential information could be stolen from the database of the organization using hacking software which is also part of information technologies. State National Carriers have very confidential information in respect of their client’s details, their payment information, etc. Adequate prevention measures should be adapted by the management of the organization to reduce the chances of threat of data stolen (Paquette, et. al., 2010).

Strategies used by the organization should also be kept as secret for outsiders because it could be adapted by their competitors and then it will not be much effective. Management needs to maintain the security systems so that only selected number of employees could enter in that area. Technologies bring both negative as well as positive impact over the organization so balance between the usage and prevention of the measures should be maintained to avoid threats related to the security, privacy, etc. of the data of the State National Carriers (Davies, et. al., 2012).

State National Carriers have appointed a team of technical members to maintain all the technologies used in the premises of the organization. Threats related to security and privacy should also be monitored by this team. Permission to enter into the cabin of technical tem is restricted in the State National Carriers to avoid risk related to stolen of database (Alhawari, et. al., 2012).

Technical team should also monitor the work performance of the teams where unique techniques are being used under the term information technology. This helps them to detect the issue in using those techniques to avoid the interruption in the performance of the organization as whole.

Conclusion

It can be concluded from the above report that information technology is very crucial in each and every field of the world especially in modern era. Importance of information technology is that it saves the time of the employees as well as it evaluates effective results without any error. Manually performed task could include en error but task completed through using information technology will be error free. Performance of the State National Carriers could also be analyzed adequately using these technologies and with the effect of these technologies, cost of the company is also reduced. With the use of improvised and unique techniques, work is performed very fast in comparison to the manually performed task. State National Carriers have developed their effective image in the minds of the customers in delivering packages on time or before the time. Customer relationship is being the strongest asset for any organization and State National Carriers are fulfilled with this asset (Ghobakhloo, et. al., 2012).

References

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Barfield, W., & Dingus, T. A. (2014). Human factors in intelligent transportation systems. Psychology Press.

Davenport, T. H. (2013). Process innovation: reengineering work through information technology. Harvard Business Press.

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Lu, Y., & K. (Ram) Ramamurthy. (2011). Understanding the link between information technology capability and organizational agility: An empirical examination. Mis Quarterly, pp. 931-954.

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Paquette, S., Jaeger, P. T., & Wilson, S. C. (2010). Identifying the security risks associated with governmental use of cloud computing. Government information quarterly, vol. 27 (3), pp. 245-253.

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Pratt, M., Sarmiento, O. L., Montes, F., Ogilvie, D., Marcus, B. H., Perez, L. G., & Lancet Physical Activity Series Working Group. (2012). The implications of megatrends in information and communication technology and transportation for changes in global physical activity. The Lancet, vol. 380 (9838), pp. 282-293.

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Venkatesh, V., Thong, J. Y., & Xu, X. (2012). Consumer acceptance and use of information technology: extending the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology.