Organisations need to communicate to people within the organisation as well as those
outside, such as suppliers and customers.
Finding out who needs information, who sends it, who receives it, how it is processed and how ICT is used to support these activities will tell
you a lot about how an organisation works.
It is common to see a number of ICT systems within an organisation, each designed to
manage different types of information.
Often, some of these systems will not link to other systems within the
organisation.
You may find that it can be inefficient and even damaging to an organisation to have isolated
ICT systems.
An example is where sales personnel use a different customer database from
the accounts or distribution departments, requiring three times as much work to keep them all
up to date compared with a single database.
Most large organisations use very similar key information.
You need to understand how organisations use this information.
You must also be able to identify typical features of such information, including that relating to:
- Personnel and training
- Accounts, finance and payroll
- Research, design and development
- Sales and purchase orders
- Stock control
- Internal E-mail
- Internet and intranet
- Product manufacture
You must be able to draw diagrams that help you describe the movement of information in
these organisations, including information flowing into and out of the organisation and
between departments.
This involves finding who needs or uses what information and then showing the connections.
The type of information should be clearly identified in the diagrams.
The following types might appear:
- Customer orders
- Purchase orders to suppliers
- Design and production drawings
- Wages and tax-paid details
- Records of staff training
- Names and addresses of employees
- Stock details
- Invoices paid
- Monthly income
- Monthly outgoings
- Web publicity pages
- Monthly profit or loss
Your diagrams should show the methods used for communicating information, including:
- Face-to-face
- Documents via internal or external post
- Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) or e-commerce
- Local area network (LAN) or Internet E-mail
- Telephone
- Facsimile
- Centralised database systems
You will need to find out which methods are effective and efficient for different
organisations.
You will also need to find out which methods are particularly effective for
different types of information.
