In various parts of the company, different procedures and software’s are used depending on what type of job it is. For example, the artist of the company would use programs for rendering images easily using professional programs such as Adobe PhotoShop than to use default standard programs such as a graphics package like Microsoft Paint. As for the main office, they would use a computer with high specifications as that has more priority due to all company information stored on the hard drive or in the back ups and the needs of communication. The functions of the warehouse are mostly to sort out the stock in chronological order to sort them in order of code so that in future it can be easily be located. The orders placed on their e-commerce website have to be printed off to acknowledge the employee to dispatch the particular order. Orders placed in quantity to up to ten would be handled by the internet and be sent of by the employee. Orders for more than ten, in bulk quantity, would be ensured by the higher authority of the company to make sure the amount of stock going out is correct and to avoid disappointment to the clients. The specialized software automatically changes the database if any stock goes out through orders as they are received from the World Wide Web. This also relieves the employees of the company to recount all the stock and also to manually change the records. All the parcels, goods or samples that come in to the organisation, is sent to the warehouse where it is conceded with a signature from the courier and updated on the computer. This also prevents confusion from everyone adding the same item on to their system. The use of computers in the warehouse would also be in benefit of how they can communicate with clients to double check the quantity sent and to certify that the item is the one specified by the client. Everything that comes in or goes out is rechecked in the warehouse with the system and on paper. The company has organised the network for an efficient workplace. This has been done in many ways. The use of Local Area Network (LAN) is placed using a wired hub. This connects several subjects through the use of CAT-5 wires to the LAN port on the computer.They also used wireless routers for their general personal digital assistant (PDA) or at times if the employees bring their company provided laptops, which can be connected through built-in wireless network card or an external wireless Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) card. This was secured using a random Wi-Fi protected access (WPA) key that consists of arbitrary numbers and alphabets excluding symbols which is usually more than 8 characters. They could have used a personal password but it would risk an attempt of TCP override by hackers and this may lead to files being shared, valuable information erased, and payment details being taken.
For my work experience, I had the advantage to pick the options I was interested in as well as the others did. In this, I opted for big or small organisations; well my higher priority was to work in a big organisation which was well known. This option was what I was looking for as to I wanted to learn how they use ICT in the real world and what they do in ICT that relates to work and in what ways is it more efficient to do like manually by person or by robot, in this case the computer. In the organisation, there were only three main places. The only places I worked in were generally in the warehouse and at times in the main office. The other area was where the main owner had worked. The core function of the warehouse was to keep the warehouse tidy and to be able to find an item effortlessly. In the main office, there was a show room for clients to come and view samples of clothes, stationery and other merchandise. Also they had to ensure that there is clear access to the fire exit and a workplace for all the employees with their personal computer (PC). In the workplace, they had to receive any calls from clients or customers regarding to place an order, to give a feedback or to complain with misunderstandings of goods sent. This was tried to be vetoed to achieve customer appreciation towards the organisation in purchasing again from them. All this was also done by the internet using email where customers sent their payment details and the order placement details. This was protected by company firewall allowing no access to the details whatsoever from the external root other than the office. To be more precise, on how ICT was used generally in the organisation would be similarly used in any department of the company. Chiefly, the main use of ICT in this type of environment would be to contact clienteles or trade companies via email and also to check updates on business around the globe to check they are doing well and that if there are any intensifying companies as being competitive with this organisation. This allows all organisations to improve on the needs in what they have to do in order to satisfy consumers to buy from them.
In the workplace the hardware’s used were PCs only. In the office, all individual employees had their own PCs which allowed privacy between the other employees as to what they were doing. Although, nothing illegal or illicit could be downloaded through the World Wide Web (WWW) such as images, video or copyrighted documents. This was done by specialized terminal service where a person’s computer is viewable using a protected web address from the host domain on the server and could be monitored as it was not right for any employee to do anything on the computer that is not related to work. The peripheral used very frequently was the printer which was connected by a shared network from the LAN itself. This enabled all the computers to send information to one source for a result.
The printer used was a HP LaserJet 2200 which was ideally excellent for the use in a office where a lot of printing is done for paper work and for customer contact. Also other minor peripherals were built-in the central processing unit (CPU) such as the compact disk (CD) drive and a floppy drive which could be removed. The input devices which were manually used were the keyboard and the mouse. The sound peripherals were the speakers and the sound card, but this had no relation to the job as employees were restricted from music or sounds that could disturb another worker. Their was also in-built web cams in the Macs which was used to take pictures of products. The organisation used an auction based website which is eBay as another source of selling their products through the use of websites. 90% of the employees were issued an Apple Macintosh as this allowed them to run specialist software created for sole usage for the company which was only compatible with Apple computers. In the office, they had set up a raid server which allows instant backup of every document stored. This worked like what ever copies in to hard drive one would instantly be copied in hard drive two. So if one of the hard drives was meant to go corrupt, the other hard drive can revive all the information stored on the faulty hard drive. They had also set up a gateway for the staff to edit the official company website, this also included adding stock to out of stock products and to print of any orders placed by customers. This also was protected by a password. This was not accessible from an external internet protocol (IP) other than the LAN at work, this was because of the gateway being hosted on the server.
In the office, the operating systems were Mac G4 OS X and Windows XP Professional. They had used Apple Macs more than the Windows as the Apple Mac supported more programs to what was better in the favour of the company. They owned 9 Apple Macintosh Computers and 1 Windows Computer. Most of the Mac’s specifications were the same with a little difference. The company used Macintosh because it was stable and reliable up to their needs. The average specs of the G4 in the organisation was :-
These specs are capable to run very fast and efficiently and would be compatible in running windows vista on it even though windows vista uses a lot of memory usage with the use of graphics.
The iMacs were preinstalled with iWork in replacement to Microsoft Office. iWork is an official product of the Apple Inc. which is all-in-one software which allows access to word processing, spreadsheets, desktop publishing and much more. This was used to create business documents using the default event merchandising letterhead and business documents used. They didn’t purchase Microsoft Office as this would have been very expensive for them as they had a large amount of computers in the workplace, and it is more better to use the pre-installed word processor or email editor. They also used Adobe PhotoShop 7.0 was purchased for the use by the artist, who’s job was to draw logos and art for pictures that are needed for the clients or to go on the website. The use of dedicate software’s only included a private application to handle all client details and contact methods.
The use of software in the company, is used for many different reasons and could be varied as there were no tasks everyday that were compulsory other than to check your email and to make sure the website is up to date. Sending emails via the LAN network to other staff was easier to conduct than to personally go to the person and tell them all the information. Emails were set up with their sub domains as “@eventmerch.com”. The iWork was used to create any type of business documents, may that be a flyer or a leaflet. Although they did not use it for this purpose, they had sent orders to other printing companies to complete their order. They used the word processor, to create business letters, to send formal letters to customers, to produce their newsletter. They used spreadsheets to do the accountings swiftly. If done on paper, this would have taken a long time. They also wrote the accounts in a book where they rechecked it just to make sure the accounts are right. The use of ICT in the department was also how the company progressed. The company itself bought merchandise from larger companies at a lower price in a bulk quantity and then put it on their website and sold it. This was their business process to gain more profits and customers with the more products.
The staff used instant messaging (IM) via the LAN where they could interact within the company to tell the person about updates. None of the information passed around in the company itself would be transferred somewhere else unless they check there email at home. To send company files or details to any outsider by the employee, this could result in the employee being fined and sacked from the job due to the dishonesty. To contact anyone other than the employees, maybe branch to branch or to a customer or a client, they would have to send it via email. There was no other way quicker than this, because if they sent it by post, it would take a long time and a lot of money. If you phone them, they would be in another time zone due to the branch being in America. They could check their emails anytime they wanted depending on the time usage they have.
The overall effects of ICT in the department I worked in, has found it really easy to view orders placed by customers through the event merchandising e-commerce website than to get the person who ordered it to send it by post which would waste a lot of time in dispatching the order as you would have to wait till the cheque gets cleared and at times could be dangerous to send cash through the post. The main use of ICT was also to contact the parcel service for a pick up delivery to send somewhere else. The problems of ICT in this department were that to do any accounts, it would take a really long time to check the amounts, if they were correct and the right figures and should be perfectly accurate result. They would have to check it 3 times with the book if the computer was correct or the book was wrong. The ICT workplace in the warehouse stopped a lot of space being used even though all the jobs done in the warehouse could be done in the main office.
