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WordPerfect Office 12 – which gives you a lot more font types than Word and is only a word processor whereas on Microsoft word you can do a lot more other than just write documents etc. If you needed software that specialized in just writing word documents you would be more inclined to go for WordPerfect, but as I needed to create a lot of other things such as tables and also edit images- Microsoft Word was better.
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Microsoft Works – This is a basic version of the Microsoft Office software that I used. It is cheaper to buy than Word but has fewer features. It is fine for creating simple letters, but when needing to create larger documents, some features may not be available. For a small business this would be great for a start because it’s a lot cheaper to purchase for the computer.
Secondly I used software called Microsoft Excel, which is spreadsheet software, which allows you to create detailed tables with formulas so that you can calculate complicated sums. The print screen to the side shows what Excel looks like. Excel is in the software package of Microsoft Office with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Publisher – and even sometime FrontPage.
Excel is used purposely for creating spreadsheet, tables and graphs. As you can see it has gridlines and ‘cells’ in which you can create tables from; you can change the cell heights and widths for the whole spreadsheet or just for one row.
There is some good software available other than Microsoft, which is on the Apple Mac PC’s and the software is MAC OS X, which provides a similar service of which the Microsoft version supplies - but it is made by Apple. Excel was very useful for my business as I could use many different formulas to do my complicated calculations, for example for use on my cash flow forecast. It saves a lot of time within the business because I do not have to calculate the costs and sales for every month each time as I can just drag formulas across to different areas saving a lot of time. Also if any changes were to be made the other figures would change respectively not needing to be manually adjusted. If something occurred within the business in the future and costs on things such as stock rose I could just adapt the formulas; so if the stock rose by 10% I could incorporate that in the formulas working out the correct figures on my cash flow and again on the breakeven.
Using graphs and charts on Excel is also very useful as if some people do not like using the grids on the spreadsheet they can view the information in a bar chart – being more visual- which makes seeing relationships between
Next I used Software again by Microsoft called PowerPoint. PowerPoint is software in which you can create presentations to show off or to make more presentable information/charts/graphs. It is widely used by business people, educators, students, and trainers and is among the most prevalent forms of persuasion technology. Currently there is no other Presentational software available with the qualities of this.
This print screen shows a chart that I created in PowerPoint. As you can see it is positioned on a ‘slide’ which means you can add animation on how the chart comes into the screen, which business people may use when making a presentation as it gives more effect and attracts the viewer more. Using PowerPoint is more efficient because it allows you to present data a lot easier with added effect with the use of the animation features. (See below). Using this for my business allowed me to easily create a graph and present it well. It allowed me to analyse the graph so that I could see how well my business is doing and how quickly I break even, and because the graph is well presented I can see really easily the relationship between sales and costs.
In this picture you can see how PowerPoint has animated this image so that it enters by bars. It attracts the viewer’s attention. These features can be done for any file, whether it is text or image.
The most important piece of software I used was Internet Explorer, or more commonly recognized by its logo. Internet Explorer is Internet browsing software in which you can search for pretty much anything you need to know – using search engines or known URL’s. With the introduction of broadband the worlds Internet usage has dramatically increased (see graph). Broadband is basically high speed internet access, which allows you to access, provide and offer information a lot faster than standard dial up.
The Internet is mainly used for Accessing Information, which involves access to the Internet and entering a search into a search engine or entering a website address (www.) Business will most likely use the Internet everyday whether it is to advertise goods, sell goods, or just to email people internally or even externally from the business. Email is a very efficient way of communicating rather than post. This is mainly for 2 reasons, it is considerably faster and it also reduces down on postage costs which a business such as mine has to spend a lot on when sending information out about items in store or even posting items to customers. There are downsides to email over post, which are;
- Email can only be done over the Internet, requiring a computer to do so.
- Emails can be intercepted and read by people who are not meant to, for example confidential information could be disclosed.
The Internet is very useful to businesses as they can record ‘hits’ on pages to see how many viewers they receive on pages in a set time. This allows them to see which areas need improvement or what to promote even further.
For a business like mine – providing games, CD’s, and DVD’s – having a website would be a very effective way of advertising and getting public appeal. It would get people interested in going to my store if offered a different service to standard audio stores that may normally take their custom such as HMV.
Using the Internet for a business can be used by having your sales records connected to an archive, so that past sales trends are not lost but are in fact stored - for the future - when a comparison to the previous year may be required to compare store improvement or failure.
I used the Internet the most out of all the software’s. I used the Internet in someway to complete all my assignments, as I needed to collect information in which I could use for assistance. I used the website very often; it is a search engine which looks all over the Internet for pages matching your search criteria. It is very quick and easy to use. It’s just a case of entering relevant information as to what you want to find into the search box, hit search, and after a few seconds the most relevant links are listed.
To protect customers of my business I would firstly secure the business website – if created – with an internet security package such a Norton 360. Norton is one of the best most reliable packages available and gives you trustworthy security while browsing the internet. It stops pop-ups that may occur on unknown website and it also stops viruses getting through when you open emails from unknown sources. Norton can be configured to your needs so that you can allow certain things to be authorized on websites. This would make my business more efficient as I wouldn’t have to keep allowing the data every time if I used that website often, I could just set the Norton to allow it automatically. Also it would be very useful, as it would stop viruses accessing my customer’s personal details and documents and corrupting them or stealing them. There is a downside to Norton though; you need to purchase new software every year as they make new up to ate versions which are quite expensive, especially when buying to protect a lot of data for example, within a business.
I would also need to take into consideration software, which would protect my customer’s bank details if they were to purchase items online. For example when purchasing on eBay they have a padlock symbol in the corner of the page which means the page is secure from any threats from an external source.
Internet and also general security for my business is going to be very important to reduce the risk of information getting stolen or corrupted. It will mean that I do not have to re-create files from scratch wasting time and costing money on wages which may not necessarily be needed. Losing data can be very dangerous to a businesses reputation for example if my business lost all records of customers that have signed up as a member, how would we know who gets discount on items or gets rewards as being a member – this will cause people to become annoyed if they have to sign up again.
To protect the employees at my business I will use software in which all their work can be done on. For example ‘Eclipse’ is transactional software in which you can run sales through on tills at a quick and easy pace, as it is very simple to use. The first initial cost of the software is expensive but it works out that as it is more efficient it pays off in the future, as you will keep your customers happy. Eclipse has its own security built in which involves each employee to create a log in username and password keeping their information confidential at all costs.
In my conclusion the software useful to my business as it enhanced the efficiency of the business as it allowed me to complete tasks very quickly and to a good standard. As the work was all ICT based it allowed me to make changes to the work simply unlike with hand written work I would need to re-write to look presentable. One major impact software had with my work was allowing calculations to be done on the computer rather than having to work them out myself. Microsoft Word allowed me to run several checks to my documents such as spelling and grammar checks to make sure that all of my work made sense and that everything was spelt correctly- this is good when handing work in so you know you haven’t made any errors.
