Office Automation Essay

Office automation has made office work to be efficient nowadays for the organizations that have adopted the system. Office automation usually refers to a situation where office activities are computerized so that it becomes easier for them to be executed faster and efficiently. This had been facilitated by use of computer in the office and it has really help many companies to cut cost in terms of manpower. Office automation has been relied on by many companies to collect, store, create and transmit office information when they are needed in order to accomplish some basic activities in the office. (Laudon, K. C. and Laudon, J. P, 1994) Our organization has adopted a number of automation and collaboration software to enable them carry on their activities efficiently and to cut cost on wages and salaries. Collaborative software is a system that an organization adopts in order to ensure that the organization is working a coordinated manner when they are executing they office work in their day to day activities. Our organization has not been left in terms of automation as it has implemented some collaborative software to facilitate office activities. Some of the collaborative software that has been adopted by our organization is use of email and instant messaging. The use of email to communicate in our organization has facilitated conveying of messages and data from one point to another either within the organization or even outside the organization. Since the organization adopted the system, it has seen the organization be able to cut cost in term on the cost it incurred previously to send communication via other mode of transmission. However, when it comes to internal communication within the organization, our company has adopted intranet system where employees within the organization uses company mail to send emails to each others only. The use of email in the office has some advantage in that it is the cheapest means of communication, one can forward the mail to another person, one can open the mail from any computer in the world that is connected to the internet, and there is unlimited storage facility. Another advantage of using email to communicate is that the message can be stored in the receiver’s inbox even if he is not in the office. Some of the disadvantages of email are that it might not be used to communicate confidential information; people might misuse the facility and keep on browsing through the internet instead of working. Instant messaging is collaborative software that has been adopted by our organization to communicate within or outside the organization. This facility is very popular in our organization as one get feedback immediately after sending a message to the other person either within or outside the organization. The disadvantage of the facility is that since it requires instant feedback it cannot be used to communicate if the receiver is not there to reply to the message. The facility also cannot be used to communicate detailed information like data and for this case; it needs someone to use another facility. The facility also cannot be used where one want to attach something like a photograph or a map. (Laudon, K. C. and Laudon, J. P, 1994) The collaborative software adopted by our organization has been of great use in our organization to convey messages within and outside the organization. Our company has saved a lot when it adopted the facilities and abandoned the older mean of communication where they used fax or even letters and parcel which are slow and expensive.