TELECOMMUNICATIONS, THE INTERNET AND WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY Name: Miguel Angel Condor Colqui Q1 * Based on the video and text of the case, list and briefly describe five areas where either version of Sametime may increase employee productivity. What do you think will produce the greatest increase in employee productivity? 1. Improve communication – Employees have a better communication through the lotus same time. Not only among them, they can also be linked with his /her boss, CEO, customer, etc. 2. Stress reduction – There is no need to wait lots of time to get, receive or access to certain information.Employee will not get stress for this kind of problems. 3. Improve access to information – Employees, bosses or whoever can upload certain information to a room, so allowed people will be able to get to them. It will be faster and restricted to the users. 4. Ease to create meetings – In the same way, there will not be reason to no assist to a meeting. You will not have to be physically in the room, because a virtual room can be created to meet. 5. Reduce lose of time – As we do not have to be physically at any place, people will not lose time moving.No buses, no cars, no traffic bottle will be a problem of everyday. * * Stress reduction will produce the greatest change. This disease is a big problem among employees and can cause a lot of problems inside the company. Not just in the production, it can cause conflicts, disagreements, misunderstandings, etc. A bad environment inside the company is not good for employee’s productivity. So if a program can solve it, why not prove? Q2 * How does Lotus Sametime support collaboration? What are the additional benefits of the virtual environment? Lotus sametime is not just a program to maintain people in contact.This program can create a relation between employees inside the organization. Most of people can get easily in contact through programs than in real life. In the same way, it can improve the communication between areas, information can be easily shared and customer will be highly satisfied. Some other additional benefits of this virtual environment are: * Employee’s knowledge can be totally discovered. * Permanent communication between among areas. * Instant screen compartment. * Geo-location services. Q3 * What types of communication are integrated within Sametime's digital environment?What type of communication is missing? Does it make a difference? * Reciprocal – it goes between two or more people changing rolls. * Linguistic and extra-linguistic – People communicate through key board (chatting) or using some familiar codes. * Private and public – The communication inside the company can be private when it occurs between two employees or public when it goes to everyone in the organization. (In fact, it is not totally private because the conversation can be followed for the database system. ) * Formal – The messages use a formal code according to the organization policies. Horizontal and vertical – It can occur in a same range people or from boss to assistant. What is missing here is the physical or interpersonal communication. It can make the difference because when people talk they express a lot of feelings. The main advantage is that employees will not realize if the other one is tired or in another bad situation. Q4 * Do you think that “virtual collaboration†using avatars is more or less effective than traditional methods of collaboration (which include face-to-face, traveling to meetings, telephone conference calls, email, and instant messaging)?Compare it with the Cisco Telepresence technology and support your answer. In my opinion, the use of an avatar is a way to hide out real personality. I mean that people can hide and try to create a second personality to look in a good way to people in the company. However, the effectiveness of the program is totally ensured as we saw in the advantage. On the other hand, it is not sure that other one behind the monitor is really your co-worker. Accounts can be stolen; in fact passwords can be stolen by virtual hackers. So I think that this kind of virtual collaboration could be used in a real emergency or to get meeting.It is really useful for meetings. If we compare it with cisco telepresence technology I can say that offers a safer communication between people, because it is face to face. Of course the main disadvantage is that people must be at the same time in the meeting to start it. Further, using cisco you can see face expressions so it can help you to negotiate in a meeting. Lastly, cisco telepresence is a more formal way to communicate and if an organization need to have a more related company, it must organize the areas functions.
