Business Computerization Essays - Information Technology Management

Business Computerization The word ubiquitous means ever present or occurring everywhere. This term could be used to describe the use of the computer in the business. The business world's benefit alone is enough to make a head spin. Every time a person goes to the grocery store, the bank, the local ATM, or even the neighborhood gym the benefit by the use of computers in modern society is unforeseen by most civilians. Many fields in business depend on the convenience, speed, accuracy, and reliability that computers have become known for. However all companies small and large benefit from the use of computers. First a company must research the impact computers will have on keeping track of there accounts. Then they must choose the correct hardware and software to best suit their particular needs, while at the same time making themselves familiar with the new enhancements that increase productivity. Finally, the company must allow time for installation and training. When evaluating the need for a computerized system in a company one will also need to forecast the future demands of the company. After all to survive in the business world one must anticipate the future and not react to the past. How does one know when it is time to make the critical transition? It is when management finds itself unable to keep track of its business? Which products are profitable? Which are not? Which customers pay on time? Which are delinquent? Having easy access to this data is essential to running a healthy and competitive business. When the company has grown enough that management no longer has access to the data used to make informed decisions, then it is time to switch to a computerized data management system. These computerized data management systems are often called information systems. The company now has two choices. It can either hire a professional consulting firm to help select and install the computer system, or venture out on its own to make these important decisions. Adequate planning is the most important step in assuring the successful use of computer technology. Most companies would be better off seeking the aid of a consulting firm. They are better informed on the different types of hardware and software that would best suit the computing needs. An outside firm is a better choice because they are less likely to make a costly mistake when choosing the new system. Another benefit to using a consulting firm would be there help in setting-up the procedures for using the new computer system and the necessary training to implement those procedures. Once the company has decided that they will benefit from computer enhancements it is then a matter of choosing which software and hardware at would be most useful. Software is just another name for the programming that computers run on. It is the language that tells computers what to do. When choosing software it is important to, make sure to select the right number and combination of software"modules" to meet a company's needs. The objective is to come up with an integrated system by selecting the modules important to the company. Here is an example of an integrated system. Say your employee sends a bill to customer. With manual systems one would have to post it three times to the sales journal, to a customer receivable account and to the general ledger. But with an integrated computer system one entry and the data will be posted automatically to all the appropriate files. There is an alternative to buying packaged software. A Company can have a custom program written. Custom programs are very expensive. Costing, up to $25,000 more, depending on the number of modules one will buy. They are generally uneconomical and unnecessary. In most cases people are able to purchase pre-packaged software at a fraction of the cost of custom software. The software will then be able to handle up to 80% of the needs. Price is not the only consideration. Before one buys, find out what comes in a software package. Read the manuals and determine if the features satisfy everything that the company requires. A good word to describe computers is ever changing. One should always be on the lookout for new computer technology to help the company. Very often the company can increase productivity with just a few enhancements. For example, multilingual programs have grown important over the years. As trade barriers in the world crumble and new opportunities continue to grow. Mid-sized and even small businesses expand their market beyond U.S. boarders; they are then

Pauses in Speech and Writing

Pauses in Speech and Writing In phonetics, a pause is a break in speaking; a moment of silence. Adjective: pausal. Pauses and Phonetics In phonetic analysis, a double vertical bar (||) is used to represent a distinct pause. In direct speech (in both fiction and nonfiction), a pause is conventionally indicated in writing by ellipsis points (. . .) or a dash (- ). Pauses in Fiction Gwen raised her head and spoke haltingly, fighting back tears. He told me Tuesday there was too much damage . . . She wiped her wet face with her fingers. But he wants to send her to a specialist in Memphis. (John Grisham, A Time to Kill. Wynwood Press, 1989)Anyone who is guilty of such practices . . ., he paused for effect, leaning forward and staring at the congregation, . . . anyone in town . . ., he turned and looked behind him, at the monks and nuns in the choir, . . . or even in the priory . . . He turned back. I say, anyone guilty of such practices should be shunned.He paused for effect.And may God have mercy on their souls. (Ken Follett, World Without End. Dutton, 2007) Pauses in Drama Mick: You still got that leak.Aston: Yes.Pause.Its coming from the roof.Mick: From the roof, eh?Aston: Yes.Pause.Ill have to tar it over.Mick: Youre going to tar it over?Aston: Yes.Mick: What?Aston: The cracks.Pause.Mick: Youll be tarring over the cracks on the roof.Aston: Yes.Pause.Mick: Think thatll do it?Aston: Itll do it, for the time being.Mick: Uh.Pause.  (Harold Pinter,  The Caretaker. Grove Press, 1961) The pause is a pause because of what has just happened in the minds and guts of the characters. They spring out of the text. Theyre not formal conveniences or stresses but part of the body of the action. (Harold Pinter in Conversations With Pinter by Mel Gussow. Nick Hern Books, 1994) Pauses in Public Speaking If you prefer to read your speech, make sure to pause frequently, take a breath, look up, and scan the audience. . . .Besides allowing you to fill your lungs with air, pausing also allows the audience to absorb the spoken words and create pictures in their own minds. The habit of pausing eliminates the dreaded um and err and adds emphasis to your last point. (Peter L. Miller, Speaking Skills for Every Occasion. Pascal Press, 2003) Pauses in Conversation There are even rules about silence. It has been said that, in a conversation between two English speakers who are not close friends, a silence of longer than four seconds is not allowed (which means that people become embarrassed if nothing is said after that time- they feel obliged to say something, even if it is only a remark about the weather.) (Peter Trudgill, Sociolinguistics: An Introduction to Language and Society, 4th ed. Penguin, 2000) Types and Functions of Pauses A distinction has been drawn between silent pauses and filled pauses (e.g. ah, er), and several functions of pause have been established, e.g. for breathing, to mark grammatical boundaries, and to provide time for the planning of new material. Pauses which have a structural function (juncture pauses) are distinguished from those involved in hesitation (hesitation pauses). Investigations of pausal phenomena have been particularly relevant in relation to developing a theory of speech production. In grammar, the notion of potential pause is sometimes used as a technique for establishing word units in a language- pauses being more likely at word boundaries than within words. (David Crystal, Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, 6th ed. Blackwell, 2008) Systematic pausing . . . performs several functions: marking syntactic boundaries;allowing the speaker time to forward plan;providing semantic focus (a pause after an important word);marking a word or phrase rhetorically (a pause before it);indicating the speakers willingness to hand over the speech turn to an interlocutor. The first two are closely connected. For the speaker, it is efficient to construct forward planning around syntactic or phonological units (the two may not always coincide). For the listener this carries the benefit that syntactic boundaries are often marked. (John Field, Psycholinguistics: The Key Concepts. Routledge, 2004) Lengths of Pauses Pausing also gives the speaker time to plan an upcoming utterance (Goldman-Eisler, 1968; Butcher, 1981; Levelt, 1989). Ferreira (1991) showed that speech planning-based pauses are longer before more complex syntactic material, whereas what she terms timing-based pauses (after already spoken material), tend to reflect prosodic structure. There is also a relationship between pause placement, prosodic structure, and syntactic disambiguation across a range of languages (e.g., Price et al., 1991; Jun, 2003). In general, tasks that require greater cognitive load on the speaker or that require them to perfom a more complex task other than reading from a prepared script result in longer pauses . . .. For example, Grosjean and Deschamps (1975) found that pauses are more than twice as long during description tasks (1,320 ms) than during interviews (520 ms) . . .. (Janet Fletcher, The Prosody of Speech: Timing and Rhythm. The Handbook of Phonetic Sciences, 2nd ed., edited by William J. Hardcast le, John Laver, and Fiona E. Gibbon. Blackwell, 2013) The Lighter Side of Pauses: Joke-Telling [A] critical feature in the style of all stand-up comedians is a pause after the delivery of the punch line, during which the audience laughs. The comic usually signals the onset of this critical pause with marked gestures, facial expressions, and altered voice intonation. Jack Benny was known for his minimalist gestures, but they were still discernible, and worked wonderfully. A joke will fail if the comic rushes to his next joke, providing no pause for audience laughter (premature ejokulation)- this is comedys recognition of the power of the punctuation effect. When the comic continues too soon after delivery of his punch line, he not only discourages, and crowds-out, but neurologically inhibits audience laughter (laftus interruptus). In show-biz jargon, you dont want to step on your punch line. (Robert R. Provine, Laughter: A Scientific Investigation. Viking, 2000)