Explain how a computerised system could improve the efficiency of an organisation, giving examples throughout

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Task 1

Explain how a computerised system could improve the efficiency of an organisation, giving examples throughout

There are two ways of keeping accounts: The manual system of accounting: this involves the accounts being done on paper

Advantages of using a manual system

It is cheap depending on the size of the company. For instance a window cleaner that receives £5.00 per customer and has only three customers on a Friday. It would be a total waste for him to spend £800 or more on getting a software to record the customers’ account because writing each customer’s name on a page recording what was paid and is owed in his pocket book is all that is really needed.

It is easy to reference data but then this depends on the volume of the transaction. For this cleaner, his business with these customers is only on Fridays and checking if one of the customers has an outstanding debt or not will be easy for him compared a company like Tesco recording needing to check something up with a manual system.

It is simple to use. Using the cleaner as an example again, recording that customer A paid after he cleaned and customer B owes £5 from 3/5/00 will be quite easy compared to Tesco recording every transaction with each customer manually bearing in mind the fact that there are thousands of them.

On the other hand, there are some shortcomings of a business using the manual system of accounting and they are:

It is prone to human errors like transpositions (when figures are written incorrectly) or illegible writing, which could easily lead to information being easily misunderstood. This kind of problem could occur due to the way the person who recorded the information writes certain letters. Say the letter f could be mistaken for a p.

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Information could be easily lost or damaged. This is because it is on paper. The paper could have fallen out of the book, in the case of the cleaner he could easily misplace his pocket book, if there was a fire or flood, the book where all the recordings were made could be easily destroyed.

Processing time. This has to do with the time used up in entering the information. Take a corner shop for example. At the end of the day all the transactions are recorded from the till so the owner knows the performance that day. ...

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