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Virtual Office
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Individual Assignment for Week Two What are the advantages and disadvantages of virtual offices, including telecommuting? The advantages of virtual offices can be a reduction in real estate, recruiting, training cost, and enhancement of productivity. Bell Atlantic manager noted in an article by Davenport and Pearlson, (1998), “This is not a perk for employees, if you can cut half a billion off the bottom line.” “Some firms cited reductions in office space of 25 percent to 67 percent: a large firm might save between $50 million and $100 million per year according to AT&T”. In addition, the mobility of a virtual office makes it possible for increased interaction between salespeople and the customer. Telecommuting is a variable of a virtual office, however the difference is that telecommunicating is used by those employees that occasionally work at home and is the most common arrangement of this type environment. Because this is not a perfect world, there are some very distinct disadvantages of a virtual office. First, managers are finding it difficult to do their jobs because employees they supervise are out of sight. In addition, they may lose their traditional office perquisites. Some employees may resist the virtual office as well due to insufficient space at home or causing a distraction to family or home environments. Accuracy of data input is important. What method of data input would be best for each of the following situations and explain why? Entering Data From Printed Questionnaires: Optical scanning is the most practical input method because it is much quicker than typing and recreating information that is already in printed format. Once the data is scanned, it can be placed in individual folders and imported into various word processing or desktop publishing applications as needed. Entering data from telephone surveys: The most efficient method would be the use of speech recognition because the data would be compiled automatically by the computer system as responses are received. This would save the cost of manpower, i.e., paying people to personally conduct telephone surveys one on one. If the one on one method were used, that individual would need to track the data and then put that data into a format that can be interpreted by the end user. This would be more time consuming and costly. Entering data from bank checks: Magnetic ink character recognition allows the bank’s computer to read checks and post them to the proper accounts. “The first bank receiving a check after it has been written must encode the amount of the check in magnetic ink…Equipment known as reader-sorters read a check by first magnetizing the magnetic ink characters and then sensing the signal induced by each character…” (O’Brien, p 90). This process eliminates the need for an employee to manually record each check written and then post it to the proper account. This process allows checks to be posted much faster. Entering data from retail tags: An optical character recognition scanner would be the best for inputting this type of information. An example would be the optical scanner at the checkout counter of a grocery store, where the bar code on the merchandise tag is read by the scanner and translated into a price by the computer.
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