New Technologies

Introduction

Draft, Murphy and Wilmott (2010) have argued that advancements in technology have had a huge impact on a number of organizations across the world today. This impact has been felt across a number of sectors of the economy on a variety of levels in the financial, health care, educational, and information sectors. The new technologies have transformed the ways, in which business is carried out. This has led to more efficient and profitable ways of doing business. Apart from positively transforming organizations, new technologies have presented new challenges and issues to a number of firms simply from the fact that they are new. This paper discusses the issues and challenges, related to bringing in new technologies into an existing organization.

New Technology

Boreham (2008) defines new technology as contemporary advancements and innovation in different fields of technology. He gave examples like that of information and communication technology and the artificial intelligence. Information technology has had a great influence on organizations given that its use on internet and web based platforms has transformed many firms. Information technology, especially information systems, has provided means for nearly all organizations to interact with customers and suppliers, to compete in the market place, and to manage their own operations.

In respect to AllTechComm, the new technology involves overhauling the AllTechComm intranet and making it one, in which the volunteers could sign up, manage their own schedules and keep in touch with their project leaders, so as to accomplish the work together.  According to Webber and Wallace (2009), this is a form of customer relationship management system (CRM), in which the company interacts with its clients. This means the company would make use of this technology through its volunteers.

Implementing New Technology

Boreham (2008) asserts that implementing the new technology will involve an upgrade and adjustment of the existing information system with the new and emerging technologies. He added that this process involves, first of all, evaluating the impact of the new technology on the organizational productivity and its impact on the users’ or workers’ morale. According to Boreham (2008), such evaluation exercise is, then, followed by the gathering of evidence on seven major factors. These factors are: the availability of adequate resources for allocation to the new technology, the availability of skilled and sufficient staff to handle this technology, and the availability of the necessary software, hardware, and Ethernet cables; and time.

Draft, Murphy, and Wilmott (2010) have argued that the actual implementation of a new technology takes a series of five steps after the evaluation process is complete. To realize such a technology strategy for fitting a new technology, an organization has to make out its vision and objectives for the new technology. The second step would involve identifying the requirements of the new technology. The third step involves designing, developing and purchasing the new technology. Additionally, at this stage an organization must seek to update its internal technology systems. The fourth stage is the implementation and training stage, which takes place once the new technology is in place and has been rolled out to an organization. In this stage, awareness is increased among the employees and the volunteers who will be using the technology. The fifth and last stage involves maintaining the specified technology through periodic updates and enhancing its continual learning among the employees and the volunteers.

Issues and Challenges of New Technology

Webber and Wallace (2009) have outlined the issues and challenges of new technology in existing organizations as including the learning curve, costs, vulnerability, access, and political risks. The learning curve results from the fact that a lot of extra time has to be spent by the staff in learning and getting acquainted with the new system. The challenge of costs comes from the view that a lot of money may be used at the initial stages of implementing this new technology.

Another challenge is that of limited or no access, which results from the fact that everyone who wants to use the technology or get information from it must have a computer. Webber and Wallace (2009) assert that political risk challenge is evidenced in situations, where the system either succeeds or fails. In such a situation, somebody is normally associated with the system’s failure or success. Another key challenge that may manifest itself in the implementation of this system is the issue of staff. Webber and Wallace (2009) explained that in such a scenario, the staff and volunteers may give preference to the older system and see no need for an overhaul. New technologies usually require hard work to maintain, mostly in the form of energy and time.

Alternative Methods of Assimilating Emerging Technology

 The conventional way of assimilating new technology could be through teaching and training of the volunteers and workers. According to Webber and Wallace (2009), whenever these conventional ways fail, people will always resort to the alternative means of assimilating these new technologies. They also supported the alternatives, arguing that they can be the most effective, since they allow the use of new technology without having to learn new ways of using the new technology. Webber and Wallace (2009) have singled out these methods as inclusive of carrying out software modifications on the new technology. They also stated a possibility of modifying a new technology or using it in upgrading the existing technology.

Apart from the modifications, Webber and Wallace (2009) have proposed a gradual introduction approach to assimilation, in which case new employees or a select panel is trained on how to use the new technology. This select panel should be responsible for the running and functioning of the new technology. Alternatively, the new technology can be made simpler with easy to use applications, which are slightly similar to the existing technology.

Effectiveness of the New Technology in Daily Business Operation

Draft, Murphy, and Wilmott (2010) propose that new technology will normally help speed up the business process, allow flexible new working methods, and totally transform how businesses function. These aspects lead to saving of time and money by the organization. New technology in business additionally results into lessening of the required resources. This results into less wastage of resources and minimal use of heavy and cumbersome machineries. New technology additionally helps to put the company in the spotlight, in terms of customer attention. This enables it to gain new customers and capture and retain the existing ones, while keeping its production cost low. The end result would be high staff turnovers.

The ease of communication that comes with the new technology always boosts fundraising efforts for the organization. This is because technology eases the process of reaching the potential donors and supporters of an organization. Draft, Murphy, and Wilmott (2010) assert that new technology will also ensure that money, which could have been used on travelling expenses, is saved by allowing the utilization of such modes as video conferencing, emailing, electronic volunteer databases, online calls and chats. Last, new technology results into increased or higher profits due to the improved efficiency, which produces less cost. Furthermore, jobs are completed more quickly, thus, enabling cash flow to be more fluid.

Conclusion

In conclusion, advancement in technology has had huge impacts on the way organizations are managed. These impacts have been both positive and negative as indicated by the challenges of implementation like the learning curve, costs, vulnerability, access, and political risk.  But all in all, new technology should be embraced, as its existence increases profitability and results into minimal wastage of resources.