Executive summary
The focus of the project
Developments made in relation to information technology is something that grasped the attention of researchers in the past. The study of business operations between two companies is similar to the study of establishing a long-term relationship between the two businesses. The success of each depends on the kind of relationship established between the two. Such relationships between businesses have elements of information, social, and business, and a number of studies have looked at the effect brought in by information technology on the various elements (Pires & Aisbett, 2003). Research studies accomplished by past scholars have been fruitful by adding knowledge into the impact of information technology in enhancing business networks and relationships. The focus of my study will be on business relationships with the specific concern being on personal meetings.
Research question: How does using information technology to enhance business relationships impact the requirement for personal meetings?
The key aim when answering the question will be to conduct an analysis of the extent to which using information technology in relationships has influences on the need for conducting personal meetings on business relationships that are in the long term.
Importance of the topic
Carrying out this project will help make clarifications on the impact of information technology on business relationships. While some of the researchers argue that information technology has been proven to be good in enhancing relationships, some of them are have been against this. Research on how information technology affects different relationship elements is an extensive one. However, the area of how information technology has effects on social integration of relationships is yet to receive attention like the other areas. None of the efforts made by past researchers has been directed towards this. Following the demand for new research in this area, my project will narrow down to how information technology is used to set business relationships and the effects it has on the social dimension. A business is usually conducted between two parties where representatives from both sides meet and then exchange information on various business issues. With time, interactions between the two parties lead to a business relationship, and hence a social dimension is developed in the process. The use of information technology in a business relationship has an impact of either replacing or changing how information is exchanged, and one of the aspects of the change is an impact on social interaction. Doing business involves a meeting of the two parties, and thus such meetings are part of the social interaction.
Strategic analysis
The focus of the research question is on personal meetings. This refers to the social interactions that happen between two business enterprises or a business enterprise and its customers. Depending on the kind of relationship established, the kind of interactions established tends to vary. The social interaction in the context of business relationships is discussed by focusing on how representatives from different businesses meet and how they get to know each other. Representatives in these personal meetings range from the top officials in the businesses to the employees at the lower ranks. It is claimed that depending on the intensity of how information technology is used to facilitate the different exchanges among the parties involved, the impact on the patterns of social interaction that can be executed without the need to have information technology can be influenced as well. The influence of information technology in businesses is broad, and it even affects aspects that have no link with the technology implemented. This shows how business operations are interconnected, where an effect on one of the aspects may end up causing effects to other aspects that were not expected. One of the important elements when looking at the impact of information technology is the number of personal meetings. Even when technology is applied to facilitate a different element of the organization, personal meetings are likely to be affected (Demiris et al., 2008). This is looked at by assessing whether the need for personal meetings will decrease, increase, or remain the same. Technologies behave differently, and hence an impact produced by one of the technologies implemented will be completely different from another. Information technology is hypothesized to have an impact of decreasing the need for personal meetings because it tends to replace some of the needs of personally exchanging information.
It has been established that the use of information technology has an impact on the need for personal meetings. The impact can either be an increase, a decrease, or no change. A decrease would imply that the efficiency of meetings has been improved as a result of information technology replacing some of the ways that were being used to exchange information. As new technologies are being improvised, the need for personal meetings is affected. This is the case for technologies that are meant to improve the effectiveness of how activities are carried out. With technologies such as zoom and video conferencing, the need for business partners to meet and discuss various issues has decreased. This has been the case because these new technologies provided a platform where meetings can be done. It has greatly decreased the need for personal meetings because the platforms can even accommodate meetings of more than two business partners (Demiris et al., 2008).
However, there are cases where the need for personal meetings will end up increasing instead of decreasing. This happens when the type of technology implemented is a difficult one to use (Demiris et al., 2008). In such a case, employees will have to be taken through a training session where they will be taught how to use it. In addition, the application of information technology can fail to have an impact on the need for personal meetings. This is a common phenomenon in the case where the technology being implemented has a different use other than facilitating exchanges of information. The reasons for the increase, decrease, or no change in the need for personal meetings can only be speculated on, and hence the best way to find out is by doing a research to examine the various aspects.
Issue analysis
The analysis section will be based on an empirical study that has been standardized. The study will contain a huge amount of questions pertaining to business networks and relationships. One of the key aims will be to establish how businesses relate to each other. A number of questions about personal meetings will be asked to analyze the effect of information technology on interactions. The other focus, when collecting data, will be the social dimensions that relationships between business enterprises possess. All this will be done in the form of a survey. Since the focus of the project is on the effect the use of information technology has on personal meetings, only a few questions from the survey will be selected for use in the analysis.
The approach used will be a quantitative analysis of data. The first step in the quantitative analysis of data is preparation. The key aim in doing this will be to convert the data into something that has some meaning and is readable (Cramer, 2003). The preparation of data has several steps. The first step is the validation of the collected data. The key purpose of doing this is to establish whether the process of collecting the data was done as per the required standards. It is also done to establish if there was any bias when the collection of the data was done (Cramer, 2003). Failure to pass these thresholds, the data will be rejected and will not be taken through the subsequent steps. The process of validating data has four steps. These are: Fraud to establish whether the respondents were taken through the data collection or not; screening to make sure that the respondents were selected using the criteria set for this research; procedure to make sure that the set procedure was followed as required; and finally completeness to make sure that the respondents were asked all the questions (Treiman, 2014).
The next step will entail the editing of the validated data. In normal circumstances, it is expected for large quantities of data to have some errors (Cramer, 2003). An example is respondents skipping some of the critical information, or incorrectly filling some of the fields. To ensure everything is correct, the researcher will have to carry out some checks to correct any problems. This process is necessary because a small error in data will affect the whole section of analysis. Once this has been completed, data coding will be done. This process entails the grouping of collected data and then giving values to the responses obtained (Treiman, 2014). Responses to the questions in the survey will be assigned values to make the data analysis easy. In this case, ranges will be set where the data will be fitted in.
Finally, descriptive statistics method will be used to analyze the data. This will be done in order to summarize the data and establish any patterns (Treiman, 2014). The common ones are mean, median, mode, percentage, and frequency. For this project, only mean, percentage, and frequency will be used. Mean is the average set of values; frequency is the times a given value has appeared in a given set of data; and a percentage is a method used to express how a given group of respondents or a value within a given set of data correlates with the whole set of data collected (Treiman, 2014). All these will be done to establish whether there is any correlation within the given data set.
Recommendations
For businesses to be able to make savings on cost and time, the best situation is where the implementation of technology is associated with a decreased need for personal meetings. Such a scenario would imply that the technology being used has replaced the various activities that required people to meet physically. This is an advantage to the business owner because the time that has been saved will be used to focus on other productive activities within the organization. Based on this, I am recommending that business enterprises incorporate technologies that benefit the organization (Bowers et al., 2018). Focusing on such technologies will also save the business the high costs of hiring outsiders during labor-intensive times. Once the implementation of technology has been achieved, employees will have enough time to focus on the tasks assigned to them, hence perfecting whatever they do. The best way to achieve this is by having technologies that will enhance communication in the workplace. In the past, communication in the workplace was only restricted to face to face communication and the use of official letters. The process was a slow one, and this led to delays when communicating about vital information. Currently, things have changed with advancements in technology, taking business communication to new levels where delivery of messages is instant (Bowers et al., 2018). Designed computer programs even manage some of the tasks. This has resulted in the removal of people from the equation of business communications. With the changes observed in the area of business communications, the only concern is about the quality of the relationships formed after information technology has been incorporated.
Short- term recommendations
One of the technological advancements that businesses should stay in touch with is the continued developments in email services. It is through emails where businesses are currently conducting their affairs (Laclavik et al., 2008). Even though it has been there for the past fifty years, it has continued to evolve from one year to the next. The central idea in these developments is to make sure it has enhanced communications between different parties. Unlike the case of a few years ago, it is now possible to send one message to many people at the same time. Such a development has made it easy for businesses’ top leadership to communicate with employees at the lowest levels instantly. Since information is received in time, the required tasks are also completed on time. Currently, email services are not just a way of sending messages but a way of managing workflow (Laclavik et al., 2008). Within the services availed by the email, users are now able to: flag messages with priority and set follow-ups on the important tasks, get alerts for messages received from the important senders, and give automated responses when out of the workplace or in a situation where it is not possible to respond. A business enterprise with these services will make the flow of communication easy and also the management of the various tasks. Enhancing email communication will have a direct impact of decreasing the need for people to meet personally (Laclavik et al., 2008).
The other short-term recommendation to the reduction of personal meetings is to implement automated voice systems service. Automated voice systems are meant to give customers automated responses hence allowing employees to focus on other important tasks. Instead of having a real person, the automated system will manage calls and direct customers to the experts in charge of handling their specific issues. The automated voice service also has the ability to retrieve data and then give customers the information they have requested. Computer bots also have the ability to handle live chats with customers. Customers will end up being satisfied because the system has services similar to those provided by real people. With such services, customers will no longer need to visit the business premises whenever they have a problem (Bowers et al., 2018).
Long term recommendation
A long-term recommendation that will lead to a decrease in the need for personal meetings is the incorporation of project management systems. Implementation of the system will lead to increased collaboration among all the employees (Cooke-Davies, Crawford & Lechler, 2009). Workers will no longer need to be in the same place or have lengthy meetings in order to discuss and share ideas. The system will cater for this by providing means of employees’ meeting and share ideas or complete tasks together even when they are not in the same place. Whether they will be working from home or in the corporate headquarters, people will be able to form a list of tasks, assign duties, upload the required information, and make appointments (Cooke-Davies et al., 2009). They will also be able to follow the progress of all tasks through the management systems. Since unnecessary travelling will be eliminated, the achievement of company objectives will be easy because tasks will be completed on time.
Implementation analysis
Stakeholder analysis
When implementing the recommended plan of action, all the important stakeholders in the business will be consulted. These important stakeholders are further categorized into internal and external stakeholders. Internal stakeholders are people who are financially and/or directly involved in managing various business operations (Missonier & Loufrani-Fedida, 2014). They include owners, managers, and employees. Each of them gets a reward for successes attained by the business enterprise. According to Missonier & Loufrani-Fedida (2014), external stakeholders are also very key to the management of business enterprises. When making decisions and performing various operations, the management team should have important external stakeholders in mind. The important ones are suppliers, customers, government, and creditors.
Ethical analysis
When doing a study, it is very important to consider the ethical issues and implications of the various aspects explored. In this case, data was collected through surveys where questionnaires were used. One of the ethical issues associated with this method of data collection is informed consent. It is important for the researcher to explain to the respondents that they have the option of refusing to participate in the survey. This is after the respondent has understood the type of questions, he/she is to participate in. All the understanding is created during the process of informed consent. The other ethical issue is communication about the option to skip questions. Human subjects are supposed to have the freedom to opt-out of the research anytime they wish to. This should also include the option of skipping questions they find to be objectionable. They should also be given the freedom to choose not to answer questions they are not comfortable sharing (Toepoel, 2015).
Anonymity is also another critical ethical issue when taking part in a survey. This should also be factored in when the research questions are designed. Surveys have questions that require personal information that participants may not be comfortable sharing unless they are promised anonymity. Lack of promised anonymity may also make respondents not to give correct answers due to fear of the information being made public (Toepoel, 2015). The promise of anonymity should hence be made before the data collection process starts. For businesses implementing the management systems and automated voice systems, the various ethical issues involved when using them should be followed.
References
Bowers, C. A., Oser, R. L., Salas, E., & Cannon-Bowers, J. A. (2018). 12 Team Performance in Automated Systems. Automation and human performance: Theory and applications, 145.
Cooke-Davies, T. J., Crawford, L. H., & Lechler, T. G. (2009). Project management systems: Moving project management from an operational to a strategic discipline. Project Management Journal, 40(1), 110-123.
Cramer, D. (2003). Advanced quantitative data analysis. McGraw-Hill Education (UK).
Demiris, G., Wittenberg-Lyles, E., Oliver, D. P., & Courtney, K. L. (2008). A survey on the use of technology to support hospice interdisciplinary team meetings. International journal of electronic healthcare, 4(3-4), 244-256.
Laclavik, M., Seleng, M., Gatial, E., & Hluchý, L. (2008). Future Email Services and Applications. In FIS (Posters & Demos).
Missonier, S., & Loufrani-Fedida, S. (2014). Stakeholder analysis and engagement in projects: From stakeholder relational perspective to stakeholder relational ontology. International Journal of Project Management, 32(7), 1108-1122.
Pires, G. D., & Aisbett, J. (2003). The relationship between technology adoption and strategy in business-to-business markets: the case of e-commerce. Industrial Marketing Management, 32(4), 291-300.
Toepoel, V. (2015). Doing surveys online. Sage.
Treiman, D. J. (2014). Quantitative data analysis: Doing social research to test ideas. John Wiley & Sons.