Now That You Are Planning To Contend In Trade, You Need Desktop Management

Every business that succeeds grows, and as it grows their communication and information technology needs grow. Step by step a computer finds its way onto each desk in the office as each employee strives to stay at the leading edge of the business. Keeping these computers in touch with one another and properly maintained requires skilled desktop management.

The term certainly sounds like an effort to get employees to adopt a clean desk approach to office work, but that would be erroneous. The goal is to create a network of computers that allow employees to interconnect and communicate to foster the synergy of group approaches to problems. The network also serves to eliminate a fair number of meetings, which tend to increasingly eat productive hours as the number of employees increase.

Having professionals dedicated to the set up and maintenance of the office information technology network is the most efficient way to get the most out of its capabilities. One of the drawbacks to computers is the complexity of keeping them running, updated and working for the employees, instead of the other way around. The costs of allowing each employee to set up their own machine and keep it working can exceed the value of the system.

One of the drawbacks to the new dependence on information technology is the cost of software and the licenses for multiple computer use. There is little a company can do as the programs need regular updating in order to stay current and to avoid security problems. The least expensive way to run a network is to have a central hub from which all the computers can be remotely cared for. There are tremendous efficiencies to gain by having an individual or small group dedicated to the care and maintenance of the company information technology system. It allows the other employees to focus on their job without the distraction of installing and updating the programs they are using to do their jobs. While individual employees may feel that it would be faster for them to install their own software, the incidence of problems arising from such a course of action reveal that is not usually the case. Every software maker touts their product as a plug and play process that requires no special training or knowledge. To their credit, most of the time that works out pretty well. But regardless the effort and intent, there are simply too many ways to install too many types of programs for the makers to evaluate and prepare for. This leave the occasion where installing a seemingly simple program hijacks the system and freezes or other wise compromises the entire network.

This method of maintaining the information system also helps preserve the integrity of this process, which is often sabotaged by well meaning and hard working employees who mean well. Invariably employees have experimented with a wide variety of programs on their home systems, and often grow quite fond of specific capabilities. In the attempt to either use the same productivity in the office or the desire to share their favorite program, they introduce these favorite programs to the work system.

One of the most common mistakes hardworking, dedicated employees make is bringing work home and then bringing it back, especially if they use their home computer to do the work at home. All the energy effort and money spent to keep the malicious software constantly attacking from the world wide web out of your system could be lost with a single thumb drive. Rarely do home systems have the same level of protection desktop management team installs on the business system, which means the overworking employee could be introducing harmful electrons from home.

There is an ironic truth in the management complaint that computers have made the business so complex that if the power goes off or the information technology freezes up, everybody may as well go home. It has come to pass that we are so deeply invested in computers to operate on a daily business that we can not continue to operate without them. While this is literally true in many manufacturing and financial sectors, it is also beginning to be the state of affairs for nearly every company, and highlights the need for systems management software.

 

In the days before the information systems tidal wave, managers still made decisions based on information. Certainly the information was lower in volume and less sophisticated, but it was relevant information the manager could use to operate his business. The advent of computers allowed the manager to widen the pool of data he could tap into and therefore make his decisions more accurately and confidently. As this ability has progressed, the dearth of information has turned into a flood.

 

Not only is the business of manufacturing a goldmine of data, but even how we find, hire, manage and motivate our workforce is the subject of mountains of information. The process of garnering this information, however, has become an enormous task outside the normal skill set of management. Increasingly we find businesses outsourcing portions of, if not the entire process.

 

This is not to imply that any manager would wish to have less information, far from it. It is that the effort to gain usable, decision-making understanding from the data has been overcome by the methodology for garnering the raw data from which it is distilled. Information carries with it nuances that help determine its meaning in the form of the entering arguments for the collection process. This is the age old recognition that how one asks a question influences the answer to a degree. With the manager expending so much time in collecting reference points and measurements, there is little left to consider the purpose and possible alternative collection means.

 

Like all tools, the computer has the potential for enhancing decisions with data that engenders confidence and produces results. It becomes problematic when the tool becomes the driving force in the business. If management is spending more time using the tool than created and delivering the goods and services at the heart of the company, there is a problem. While the information and uses for it grow exponentially, management possesses an ability to use it which remains fairly stagnant, which means there is inefficiency in the process as a whole.

 

There is a means of restoring sanity to the balance of business using computers; the use of the computer to control the information gathering and analyzing automatically. This is, in essence, using a computer to run the computer, and it pays immediate and far reaching dividends. This gives management the ability to make the decision on what data it needs and in what format it wants the information presented. That accomplished, managers can spend their time doing what they were hired to do; run the company and make a profit.

 

All leaders intrinsically want to have a feel for what their company is doing. There is no scarier feeling than being responsible for something and not having the first hand knowledge of what is being done to make it happen. This does not mean that the CEO of a company needs to know the name, start time destination and cargo of every truck carrying product within his company, that is what the management hierarchy is about. Unfortunately, the nature of man is to be curious, and if the data is available it is difficult not to get captured in the mountains of minutia.

 

Allowing the manager to spend their time using the data is the goal of information technology, and that means that while they need to understand what and how information is selected for their use, they need to be able to rely on data that is collected and provided to them as they need it. If new data geographic information is useful in determining which stores need more or less product, then they need a means to tell the computer to collect it for them. Systems management software provides the means for management to go from slave to the machine to leader of an industry.