IT in Businesses

Please complete the following assignment, incorporating ideas and concepts from the week’s lecture and/or articles. Please feel free to incorporate outside resources as well. When completing your assignment, please make sure to double space your paper.

Traditional Paper

Research, identify and discuss the evolution of Information Technology and the impact it has had on businesses.

The requirements below must be met for your paper to be accepted and graded:

• Write between 500 – 750 words (approximately 2 – 3 pages) using Microsoft Word.
• Attempt APA style, see example below.
• Double space the assignment. Use font size 12 and 1” margins.
• Include cover page and reference page.
• At least 80% of your paper must be original content/writing.
• No more than 20% of your content/information may come from references.
• Use at least two references from outside the course material, preferably from EBSCOhost. Text book, lectures, and other materials in the course may be used, but are not counted toward the two reference requirement.

Reference material (data, dates, graphs, quotes, paraphrased words, values, etc.) must be identified in the paper and listed on a reference page.Reference material (data, dates, graphs, quotes, paraphrased words, values, etc.) must come from sources such as, scholarly journals found in EBSCOhost, online newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal, government websites, etc. Sources such as Wikis, Yahoo Answers, eHow, etc. are not acceptable.

Role of Information Technology in Organizations

During this lecture, we will discuss the role Information Technology plays in organizations.

I’d like to begin our lecture by taking a minute to discuss technology in general.

As long as there have been human beings on this planet, there has been technology in some way, shape, or form. Whether it was the cavemen carving and shaping rocks to use as wheels or creating the first personal computer, technology has driven the evolution of our species and our civilization. According to Brian Arthur in his latest book, The Nature of Technology, “More than anything else technology creates our world. It creates our wealth, our economy, our very way of being,” Think about this for just a minute. Wouldn’t you agree? When discussing technology, it’s often difficult to separate it from society as a whole. Technology allows us to look at the world differently and to see beyond what is, in a matter of speaking, to what could be. This ability has allowed us to create innovative solutions and technologies that have helped our society flourish through the generations and well beyond what we ever thought were imaginable. It’s important for us to understand that when we are first developing and exploring concepts, we need to be creative but yet keep in mind what is reasonable to create. It is this exciting combination of creativity and reason that encourages us to learn from our past mistakes, push boundaries that we did not think were possible, and dream future possibilities.

Now let’s shift gears and discuss the basic role of Information Technology in organizations.

Information technology or IT as it is commonly referred to, has recently become essential for organizations to efficiently conduct business. I don’t care if you are a global corporation that maintains a room full of mainframe servers, or a one person operation that owns a single computer, IT plays a role in how efficiently you operate.

From a very basic stand point, technology helps organizations efficiently manage information that is vital to their operation from the flow of data to employee records. Technology also allows organizations to operate with little manpower which helps to lower the cost of doing business. It connects the organization to their distributors, their customers and their employees. Also, because of its ability to lower costs, it allows instantaneous access to information so organizations are better able to offer lower pricing of their products without having to sacrifice quality.

There are countless reasons that IT is essential to businesses, however, for our purposes, I think we will just focus on four of the most important roles of IT which we briefly list below:

Managing Communication

• Email is the chosen form of communication for many businesses and provides an easy and low cost way to for the business to communicate with employees, distributors and customers. The Internet also allows businesses to communicate, advertise and sell their products to people around the world.

Managing Inventory

• Helps businesses manage their inventory by keeping track of the quantities of each product they want to keep in stock and will trigger an order when the amount falls below the pre-determined quantity.

Managing Data

• Most businesses now store electronic versions of all documents that are instantly available for immediate access.

Managing Customer Relationships

• IT helps businesses improve how they manage relationships with their customers by using software that will record all interactions a business has with a customer.

A detailed explanation of how to cite a source using APA can be found here (link).

Download an example here

Grading Criteria Assignments	Maximum Points
Meets or exceeds established assignment criteria	40
Demonstrates an understanding of lesson concepts	20
Clearly present well-reasoned ideas and concepts	30
Mechanics, punctuation, sentence structure, spelling that affects clarity, and citation of sources as needed	10
Total	100