By Day 5

Respond to two of your colleagues in one or more of the following ways:

• Explore additional ways that the technology experiences of your colleagues might impact you or change your practices.
• Share with your colleague ideas for how they might adopt other technologies to enable them to further improve their effectiveness as business managers.
• Compare your colleague’s experience with your own, and share additional insights you gained.

General Guidance: Your Shared Practice Discussion responses, due by Day 5, will each typically be 1–2 paragraphs in length as a general expectation/estimate

POST 1:

Robert Parker (2012) mentioned in his article, “The 10 Top Ten tech issues,” after Cisco Systems Inc. applied bring your own device (BYOD), “the company’s costs went down 25%, and user satisfaction went up 200%” (p. 22). I can fully understand benefits of BYOD in spite of disadvantages. The technology that brought tremendous advantage to my business and my personal life is the mobile device (smartphone).

I work in the Real Estate industry with my business partner. We mainly purchase rundown homes, remodel them, and sell them at a market price, which is also known as flipping homes. There are six departments in our organization. My business partner is the broker, and I coordinate the process between departments. Departments consist of administration, IT, Real Estate Broker, Real Estate Law, architectures, and construction.

The process starts when the Real Estate department finds a property, they would hand the paperwork to the Real Estate Law department. They would check for liens and to see if the property had any legal issues. Afterwards, they would hand the paperwork over to the architecture department. This department will review if all permits and property constraints are removable. Once all departments consent to the property, then the work begins. Typically, this entire process takes about a month; furthermore, the process was done manually.

During my previous course, Foster a Culture of Innovation, I proposed my organization to develop an application for mobile and desktop. This app enables all of us to share the information once the RE department enters an address of a property. It will notify all the departments once the new property address is entered. This application is for our organization only, and personnel using this app will need to log in with user identification and their password.

This app will allow our organization to go green by reducing actual paperwork and have all the documents digitally done except for the physical signature part. When we implement this system, our revenue will increase 400% by eliminating manual work and the waiting period between departments. Therefore, as one of the owners of the company, I would encourage BYOD and even offer mini tablets for employees to interact using mobile devices. Of course, security will be the priority concern that we need to address.

Our company is relatively small, consists of less than 20 employees. Thus, at this point, the security is reasonably contained. What we need to keep in mind, while we prepare for the future, is the privacy issue of our clients. Parker (2012) stated, “Today’s computer security practices must deal with these and other threats in order to protect the reputations and intellectual capital of organizations, the privacy of their customers and the integrity of their systems” (p. 25).

On a personal level, I would be lost without my mobile devices. I mentioned in the class café about my mother’s situation. We have doctors’ appointments at least three times a week. Many times I missed the appointment because I forgot to enter into the calendar. After missing few of the appointments, that is the first thing I do as soon as I receive her appointment. My smartphone is like personal secretary where it reminds me every doctor’s appointment and other schedules I have.

In summation, my proposal is in the process of development. The mobile device technology is increasing very rapidly. In a Real Estate business, time is of the essence, and we must act quickly. Almost everyone has a smartphone that has the capability to take a picture and share it with anyone and everyone. We can be apart in different location, but we are always connected via the mobile technology.

Reference

Parker, R. (2012, September). The top ten tech issues. CA Magazine. 9, 20–26.

POST 2:

Technology has changed my personal life a great deal. I do not usually think about the ease of using technology daily but as I reflect on this discussion, I see how many daily tasks are made less cumbersome with the use of technology. Things like setting my ADT home alarm can be completed and monitored from apps on my smartphone as well as the thermostat in my home. Being able to complete the small tasks from an app on my phone helps me every busy morning when I am running behind. Another piece of home technology (I do not have it but my parents do) is the Samsung smart refrigerator that lets you use an app to see inside the fridge. My mom really loves having this capability when she goes to the grocery store.

Technology on smartphones for communication has also changed the way I interact with my friends, family, and husband. Apps such as Snap Chat allow people to communicate quickly with a sentence or short video. This type of technology makes it possible for families who live apart to be part of a child’s daily life by seeing when they roll over for the first time or go to their first day of school. Smartphone technology is one of the greatest changes in our personal technology and continues to evolve to become greater.

Professionally technology has changed the way I do my job daily. Email is one technology which has evolved over the years to become the main form of communication I have with co-workers as well as colleagues in another financial institution. Using email to speak to others allows me to document anything I am told for both clarity and to protect myself. In the financial business, documentation is key to keeping strict records and files. Technology affords businesses many advantages but also creates risks and obligations (Parker, 2010).

Another form of technology that was added to my work station early last year is a portable scanner. The scanner allows me to convert documents into PDF for attaching to emails, saving, or sending via email. The PDF converter program which came with the scanner allows me to make changes to documents as well as condense files to save in smaller space. This scanner allows me to be able to complete my job daily without hardly needing to leave my desk. Two monitors at my work station allow me to work fluidly within two documents in a much more time efficient manner than switching screens continuously. This also means I make less errors.

Company flexibility when providing new technology will improve efficiency and effectiveness of employees (Drnevich & Croson, 2013). As a business manager, applying smartphone technology with the use of apps as well as desktop technology such as portable scanners can increase productivity in workers as well as decrease the likeliness of errors. In the banking industry, the less errors we make means a much cleaner and smooth exam. As an employee, having this type of technology available allows me to complete my tasks more efficiently and effectively which leads to happier employees and better customer service overall.

Reference:

Drnevich, P. L. & Croson, D. C. (2013). Information technology and business-level strategy: toward an integrated theoretical perspective. MIS Quarterly, 37(2). 483–509.