Friday, January 3, 2014

Communication - Information Technology

In the last byte, we briefly looked at written communications tools generally used in an organization. In today's byte, we look at communication technology in a bit more detail.

Information technology that uses computers as a medium for communication is no more a tool that is built for the technical specialists - it has moved on to develop ability by which today's managers can directly access information at the click of a button! Databases and ad-hoc queries are today commonplace - and these empower the manager with tremendous information that could help intelligent business decision making.

Internet penetration is not just limited to just the access of databases - Electronic mail or simply e-mail that we so commonly use today is an extremely powerful tool. Face-to-Face or telephonic conversations are synchronous in the sense that they require both the sender and the receiver of the communication to be available at the same time; however e-mail frees up the requirement. The sender could leave a message and the receiver could access it at his/her own convenient time and reply. It also reduces the time-delays that are associated with the postal mail and has the potential to provide an immediate reply.

If one is to choose between face-to-face communication and electronic mails - the preference; research shows, varies with the nature of the decisions and may depend on the complexity and content of what needs to be communicated.

We shall continue this discussion further in the next byte.

No comments:

Post a Comment