Choice of Technology
In the 21st century, technology is the core business driver (Agrawal and Carpenter, 2006). The choice of specific technology on the other hand, is one of the harder tasks a manager has to carry out in the normal business operations. Businesses find themselves under the pressure of harnessing the power of various IT based business requirements like software, hardware, networking and so on.
For this, there is a set of factors that the manger must consider before arriving at the most ideal technology. As a manager, I think it would be necessary to consider these factors in choosing an appropriate technology:First the manager must consider the scale and the scope of operations at hand before choosing the specific technology to use. In case of a small and medium organization; the significance of a technology is mostly much lower compared to that of a large chain retailer, whose operations are at a national or an international scale. For instance, from computer networking, perspective large organization need very complex computer networks (mostly Virtual Private Networks or Wide Area Network), whereas small and medium organization need simpler networks. In such a scenario, the manager must determine the scope before deciding which specific technology is applicable in their organization.Next, the manager must then consider the financial resources available for the specific technology. Today, investments in technology have skyrocketed and large organizations are buying customized software from vendors very expensively. Smaller organizations are left to use open-source or cheap alternative software and that paves way for a crucial differentiating factor in choosing technology. Such an approach is also common when choosing any other type of technology.
Furthermore, the manager must consider the nature of business of the organization when choosing a specific technology. According to (Agrawal and Carpenter, 2006), organizations dealing with IT-related businesses would ideally require some specialized IT-specific technologies as opposed to those that are non-IT based. For instance, a data handling company would need to invest in very advanced physical security and software technologies as opposed to a coffee shop that needs basic IT equipment at a much lower investment.
Conclusively, managers must base their choice of technology on the scale and scope of the organization because larger organizations mean bigger investments. Next, the financial budget of an organization and the nature of the business determine what an ideal choice of technology would be.
References
Agrawal, V. & Carpenter, D.A. (2006). Planning for Information Systems Outsourcing. Outsourcing Management Information System. Idea Group …
