Digital Firm
The term ‘Digital term’ has been coined for the organizations that believe in building sound and core everlasting business relationships with the customers, employees and their suppliers through digital networks. The technology that is being used by the firm for their core and important business functions helps in supporting these digital networks. The digital firm encapsulates various platforms that give the organisations a chance to bond with the customers and their employees. It also minimises the physical effort and work load on the employees and helps in coping up with the leading technology. The digital networks span the whole organisation and link multiple organisations to accomplish vital functions. The digital media helps the organisation to reach a larger set of people and build long lasting relationships. The technology platforms that are enabled by these digital networks are: – Enterprise Resource Allocation systems, Knowledge Management Systems and Customer Relationship management system among many more. These are also the areas where technology is employed within the firms and help in increasing the firm’s performance.
The digital firm environment has greatly increased the efficiency of the organisation’s mainstream processes. The organisations need to study the model of information systems to sustain in this competitive environment. In this field, the computer systems gather the relevant and abundant data and store them in their memory. The data can be easily processed and integrated with the required material to fetch the information that the firm actually needs. It gets available to everyone who can access it, in a way that is suitable to them. (Laudon, 2010) The time, money, energy and the effort spent on physically handling and compiling the data is saved and the firm can focus on other important aspects of business. The people and the computerised technology are the central part of the Digital firm. It is a centrally coordinated system that sustains itself through computers and management. There are four main reasons due to which the economy is diverting its focus on the digital firm concept and discarding the conventional one. These reasons are:- the fast and rapid emergence of the Global Economy, the ever growing and transformation in the industrial economy, the developments in the business enterprise and the rapid advancements in the technology. These reasons are responsible for the major shift of the organisational goals and the procedures used in the accomplishment of these goals. (Laudon, 2010) The rising competition in the global market and increase in the efficiency of the work groups and delivery systems have forced the organisations to turn themselves into the High-Tech slaves of the masses. The processes ranging from getting the raw materials to the company site to the manufacturing processes to the delivery systems, all are handled electronically and their data is saved in the memory of the information systems. The knowledge and information based societies are more comfortable in working in these kind of environments and offer easy to work opportunities and earning possibilities. (Laudon, 2010) These systems and procedures have also helped in tracing the records of new products and services being offered at the market. We would trace the role of these systems in the organisation:
Enterprise Resource Planning:-
The ERP systems are aimed at achieving operational efficiencies and performance improvement opportunities for the firm. It provides a paperless environment easing out the inventory tracking processes, thereby increasing the overall accuracy. The systems are a bit complex to understand and required a lot of functional personnel but the results have always be positive. This substantial process can be employed in almost every manufacturing firm and take advantage of the upcoming technology.
Customer Relationship Management:-
We have seen many a times that our mobile network service provider sends us many messages on our phones telling us about the latest offers that their company has to offer. And often we get calls from various companies that make us buy their products like credit cards or vacuum cleaner etc to promote their products. (Laudon, 2010) These systems get our numbers from the telephone directories or our mail ids from various sites we login in our day to day lives. This is a part of the Customer management processes that the firm undertakes. The car companies offer us warranties and repair facilities. These things help the firm to make trusting relationships with the customers.
We can conclude that these Digital firms are changing the face and the working atmosphere of the modern organisations. The information systems and computers have digitized the firms helping them to attain more profits at lesser investments. It has minimised the physical effort and work load on the employees and has helped in coping up with the leading technology. The digital media helps the organisation to reach a larger set of people and build long lasting relationships.
References
Laudon, K. (2010). Management system information. (9 ed., Vol. 5, p. Chapter 9). Retrieved from http://wps.prenhall.com/bp_laudon_mis_9/