Technology
And Systems Trends
There are some specific breakthroughs that have made
international projects possible and easier as well as cheaper. Some of these
are:
-
Telecommunications. The middle
twentieth century saw the worldwide telephone system being established. Fiber
optics and satellite communications greatly increased both the capabilities and
the capacity for communications. Costs have been dramatically lowered. A
telephone card can let you talk to most of the people of the world for a very
low per minute charge.
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Networking. Networking technology has
taken advantage of the telecommunication advances to allow for high-speed data
and image communications.
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Mobile communications. Cellular phone
use has continued to rise rapidly over the past five years. While the growth is
lower today, it is still on the rise. Mobile communications not only offers
convenience to people and organizations, but it offers an alternative to
standard land-based communications. This increases reliability of communications
overall and encourages businesses and individuals to carry out more work
overseas.
-
Hardware and systems software. Twenty
years ago, hardware was much more expensive. Further back, there were many
incompatible systems. The dominance of first IBM and then Microsoft has created
standards for computing and common computing environments. Both of these
facilitate and make feasible many international projects.
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Computer systems. In the earlier days
of IT (information technology), most computer systems were built for a specific
firm in a specific company. The emergence of software packages changed the
landscape. Many ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems can be tuned and set
up to run in many different countries operating with different currencies and
different rules and regulations.
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Internet and World Wide Web. Probably,
nothing has been more dramatic in impact than the use of the Web for
communications and supporting the operations of multiple locations. Information
is more available and widespread than it has ever been. There is a greater
awareness of what is going on around the world. This in turn has fueled the
interest in international projects.
What does the technology help an organization do better? How does
technology support the global trends mentioned above?
-
Ability to clone the infrastructure and
replicate it in many locations. Look at retailing or manufacturing. Today,
you can take the software in one location and establish it in a location
thousands of miles away with the same type of hardware and networking
technology. You can then adapt it to local conditions more easily due to
flexibility. You can obtain vendor support in many countries similar or
comparable to what you have at home. One retail firm boasts that they can
establish a new remote location within 60 days.
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Ability to control remote locations on a
more or less real time basis. Going back in time, the method for control was
to empower the remote manager with almost all power and discretion of authority.
Times have changed. Today, for many firms, there is a daily monitoring of what
is going on in each location. Production schedules can be established, fine
tuned, and changed overnight.
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Ability to provide for
standardization. The technology supports standardization. This means that if
different locations use similar software or databases, they can share
information quickly and effectively without massaging the data.
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Ability to support some flexibility in
offering products and services. Notice the word “some.” Automation and
technology provide for limited flexibility and still act to restrain a company
from carrying major new changes due to the limitations of the software. However,
there is greater flexibility than was the case years ago
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