Year: 2011
Type: report
Abstract: Senior executives are being barraged by the business press with the message that personal computers, computer-aided design, telemarketing, and a myriad of other applications of electronic technology will give them and their companies new muscle tone and greater profits.Behind this ever increasing assault, there is the reality of an ever expanding gap between the opportunities that information technology present and the effective utilization of these technologies.The gap is caused by two factors: An unprecedented increase in functionality and cost performance of the information technologies which is creating strategic opportunities for many companies.The fact that most senior managers have little or no experience or background in managing information and telecommunications technologies.Thus they do not have an experiential base to relate this new form of strategic opportunity to their business.It was only a few years ago that Alan Kantrow wrote, "The past Processors .Today's $5000 personal computer is almost equivalent in capability to the million dollar computer of the 1960's.Tel ecommuni cati ons .Long distance fiber optics circuits will be installed during the rest of the decade at one tenth the cost of the conventional circuits they will replace.This will provide a radical change in telecommunications cost/performance.Software .Despite the publicity given to the hardware, this is the area of most dramatic change.Languages and applications that facilitate new uses and users of information technology are coming to market at an ever increasing rate.For example, not much more than a decade ago, it cost hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of dollars to program financial pro-forma capability.Today, a "spread sheet" program like "VISICALC" costs a few hundred dollars.Literally hundreds of thousands of copies have been sold to end users in the market place.And ever more powerful and more easily usable software is being produced at an increasing rate.The New Business Environment -Today all businesses face the unrelenting pressures of a business environment characterized by 2 intense global competition, as recently described by Levitt.Moreover this increasingly competitive world has developed against a backdrop of difficult economic conditions including long term high inflation, high interest rates, and low real growth.
Author: Robert I. Benjamin
Language: English
Subfield: Management Information Systems
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1582726798