Management Technology in Virtual Work World

Video Transcription

Hello there, and welcome to this tutorial on management technology in the virtual work world. Now as always with these tutorials, please feel free to fast forward, pause or rewind as many times as you need in order to get the most out of the time you'll spend here.

So let me ask a couple of questions off the bat. How is it that technology has changed your world? If you stop and think about it, technology moves so rapidly and so fast that some of us can barely keep up with how technology changes in those everyday routine things that happen. So imagine what it's like when you have to apply those things in a business.

Well, during this lesson, what we're going to be looking at is management and technology skills. We're also going to be looking at management information systems, and risks facing managers. The key term for this lesson is going to be management information system.

So let's go ahead and talk about management and technology skills. Now, management and technology are merging more and more and more. They're coming together in a really quick, exponential way. And what we're finding is technology is the thing that's driving this change.

Now as a result, technology skills are going to be a must for any manager. In order to be a good and effective manager, you have to understand the technology of the systems that are going on around you. And there are going to be new technology skills that are going to be put in place to help you understand what's going on, and, in effect, be a better manager.

So let's talk about and define management information systems. Now this is simply an electronic systematic evaluation of an organization in such a manner as to help managers perform their duties. Well this sounds promising.

Well, management information systems, or MIS are computer systems that are used in management. And these are systems that are designed to benefit all the managers within an organization. And these computer systems are used in management, not only that, but also in the processes and procedures that surround the system itself.

Now these things are going to give you information on items such as reports and schedules, budgets and plans. And these are just a few examples of what they'll be used for.

Now to get a little more specific, if I have a computerized scheduling system where the employee can go in and update his or her availability for a particular week, that helps me as a manager make a schedule that is more beneficial to the employees, and also more effective for me. It's going to generate reports on particular practices or goals that I've set throughout the day.

Well, also with budgets, I can update, real-time, the money that I've spent. So I can keep a closer track on what money is coming in and what money is going out. And all these things can help me plan as a manager.

Now human resource management is also helped by MIS, because it's going to give data an easy access to information from a lot of different departments that relate to human resource management to the human resources team.

Now also with management information systems, we're going to see that businesses use a variety of different MIS's or management information systems, depending on that organization's goals and needs.

Some examples of this may be an enterprise resource system, where I have a system in place that looks at the resources that I have throughout the company. And I can help track these real-time. So the information I'm getting is much, much quicker. And I'm able to make more timely and informed decisions about different resources within the company.

Now as you can see, these management information systems can be very useful to collect and analyze data based on what the company is doing. And what you'll see is businesses in similar industries may have similar MIS systems because they're tracking the same things.

And what we track with these MIS's, or management information systems, can help us support that decision-making process that we're going to go through as managers. And it can also help with information sharing throughout the organization.

Well, what are some risks that face managers? Well, one, with any computer system, you have to worry about misuse of data-- knowing where the data comes from and where it could be fairly applied. It doesn't do me any good to take information on how much I'm spending to build a particular widget, if what I'm looking for is employee morale necessarily. I have to make sure that I'm using the correct data for the correct problem.

I also have to worry about protecting data, and being aware of risks to data such as hackers, identity theft, and phishing for example. I'm always having to update the systems, and also update the data that's contained within those systems. Keeping an old data, while changing or updating your hardware is going to be beneficial. Otherwise you lose really important data along the way as you make these upgrades.

I also have to worry about technology usage-- keeping up with new technology and training employees to use them. I have to keep up with what other businesses are using. And more importantly, I have to keep up with what my customers expect and what my customers are using in a way that makes sense. And it doesn't really matter here whether you have a big company or a small company. The challenges here are going to be the same. It's just they get tackled a little bit differently.

So what is it we learned today? Well, we talked about management and technology skills. We also looked at management information systems-- those things that help support and define some of the decisions that we are going to be asked to make as managers. And lastly, we looked at those risks that face managers-- identity theft, updating systems and protecting that data that we have in the system.

Now as always, I want to thank you for spending some time with me today and you folks have a great day.