Web Electronic Meeting Systems: Supporting Group Communication And Activities

Intranets and Employee Portals

Discuss About The Web Electronic Meeting Systems Supporting.

Electronic Meeting System (EMS). This is a very complex software that utilizes the interconnection of computers to facilitate communication among members of a certain group (Rotondo 2008). It supports all the group activities like voting of the group’s executive members, discussion on the matters of concern by the group, making of decisions which may also require voting and analysis of data and information by the group. The main aim of the Electronic Meeting System is to convey or communicate information to all the members of the group and perform group activities without necessarily meeting physically for the meeting.

Intranets and employee portals. Intranet is a local area network only accessed by the employees of a certain business or organization (Hussein et.al 2008). Every employee in the business is issued with an account where he or she can log into the system and access various resources of the organization depending on the access rights and levels allocated to him or her by the business or organization’s intranet manager. The employees have real time access to organization’s information and data, they can share information amongst themselves in the network and can search for certain information and resources present in the intranet.

Evolving web (Hall & Tiropanis 2012). The World Wide Web evolves each and every day accommodating new features and technologies as time goes by. It consists of web capabilities, social interaction, workspace each of which keep changing continuously with time and future web capabilities. The web applications have changed the role of the web users from consuming the data and information in the web to creating the data and information. A feature known as crowd sourcing where data and information is collected from various web users. Nowadays there are mash up websites that use data and information from different service providers two or more. The evolving web through social interactions change the peoples’ way of life spiritually, mentally, physically and socially. The evolving work space is now accommodating working online at the comfort of peoples’ homes. Future web capabilities known as semantic web where the index pages, topics, subjects and searches will be enhanced.

Social media platforms (Edosomwan et.al 2011). These are platforms that enhance interaction between internets users for example twitter, face book, whatsApp and instagram. Through these platforms users can interact easily, fast and using less money. Organizations and businesses nowadays use these platforms to market themselves to the customers by giving the description about the organization; where it is located, the services they offer and how to get their services and products. They also use these platforms to respond to customer queries and earn customer trust.

Evolving Web

WIKIS. Wikis are websites that allow users to create, update, delete, share and discuss about data and information according to Myers 2010.  It enables users to collaboratively feed information to the web by creating, editing, discussing and agreeing on the most suitable data and information about an entity or on a particular subject.

Customer power is the most significant competitive force for an organization in terms of making Information System investments decision. Customer power is the customer ability to control the prices of products in the market due to the availability of different substitute products in the market. An increase in the substitute products in the market increase customer power.

Customer power is significant because the organization needs to know which products do the customers have least customer power over and which ones the customers have high customer power. Once this is established the organization can now make decisions on what products to invest in.

New market entrants are the least significant competitive force for an organization in terms of making Information System investments decisions. New market entrants are new organization in business that brings competition.

New market entrants is the least significant because it only brings in competition to the market but as long as the organization maintains customer and supplier intimacy, new market entrants is not significant. The only things that matter with this competition are if the customers are satisfied with the products and services the organization offers.

According to Internetworldstats.com, 2018, the world’s total population accessing the internet has increased from 50% in 2016 to 54.4% in late 2017, a 4.4% increase. In December 2017, 95.0% of the population of the United States was accessing the internet whereas in the European countries 85.2% of the population was accessing the internet. Just like early 2016, in late 2017 and early 2018 countries in Asia and Africa are still struggling to gain access to the internet. 48.2% of the population in Asia has access to the internet while in Africa there is a slight improvement of the population of people using the internet from 10% in early 2016 to 10.9% in the late 2017 and earl 2018.  Though the penetration of internet in Africa is at 35.2%, which is very promising in the near future.

In the coming 5 or 10 years to come, the world’s total population accessing  the internet, will be at 66%, say yearly the population of world accessing the internet increases by 4%. In the United States, 100% of the population will be accessing the internet whereas in the European countries 95% of the population will be accessing the internet. With the current penetration rate countries in Asia and Africa won’t be struggling a lot to access the internet. Around 60% of Asia’s population will be accessing the internet whereas 35% of Africa’s population will be accessing the internet. The penetration of internet through African countries will have increased to 40%.

Social Media Platforms

Fiber network connections need to be implemented in developing countries especially in Africa where internet penetration and the population of internet users are still too low. This will enhance internet penetration in African countries.

Implementation of resilient long haul topology. This will enable internet users to access the internet without any interference from natural calamities due to the resilient topology. This topology should be implemented world-wide.

New job opportunities will arise. Especially in Africa, internet configurations have to be administered. Experts in network configurations will be required to set up networks around the world. Fiber network connections will have to be set, implementation of resilient long haul topologies would have to be done.

Cyber crime will increase. With the introduction of new internet users to the global village, malicious people may use this opportunity to exploit them and earn money. Organizations that have not implemented security measures for their data and networks will be exploited too.

Social commerce is a section under electronic commerce where business or trade is done using social media platforms according to Huang and Benyoucef 2013. The buying and selling is done through social media platforms like face book, twitter and instagram. Social media offers sellers with the platform to advertise their products and services describing them in details; providing the photos and the advantages of using their products and services over using their competitor’s products and services. It also offers buyers with the platform to analyze and compare the prices and advantages different sellers offer. This enables them to choose on what product and service provider to get services from.

To expose and expand the company. Through customers’ social network companies send referrals and information about the services they render and the products they sell. By doing this information about a certain company reaches a lot of customers and the company gains recognition in the market. More and more customers come by day in day out and the company gains exposure and expands.

Achieve marketing at lower costs. Instead of using bill boards and advertising the company using broadcast companies which is expensive, companies use the social media platform through customers’ social network to advertise who they are and what services they bring into the market. This is a cheaper mode of marketing and reaches as many people as possible.

Disaster response strategy. Through the customers’ social network, a company can respond to a certain real time problem in the fastest way. Many companies have implemented the social media as a disaster mitigation strategy and most of the time works to their advantage. By so doing the company gains their followers’ trust.

Wikis

Used to provide their customers with the most informative bio about the company. Companies use the customers’ social network to give exclusive information about what the company is all about, its services, where it is located and when it started. This is aimed at convincing customers on trying the services rendered by the company.

Organizational issues associated with social media on:

Organizational hierarchy

Role impersonation. Employees in an organization might masquerade in the social media with higher ranks than they actually have. This becomes difficult for the customers to differentiate who the legit Manager CEO and Secretary are. It also becomes difficult for the holders of roles to offer services to the customers in the social media platform.

Finding the most effective way of implementing social media. Delegating roles of different employees like who is responsible to reply to certain claims is very difficult. This is because everyone in the organization wants to participate. Therefore implementing social media in an organization becomes very difficult.

Decision making can also be affected. An organization’s decision making process can be affected by what happens in the social media (Bulmer & DiMauro, 2009,). Most organizations tend to trust the information from the social media especially, when it is a way of improving an organization’s performance in the market.

The new technologies introduced in the social media influence how organizations market and advertise their products (Hanna, Rohm, & Crittenden, 2011). Live streaming in the social media has enabled organizations to give a live illustration of how their products work.  Most organizations nowadays consider themselves not in business if they are not in the social media.

Exposure to malware. Through the social networks, malicious individuals might attach viruses that may lead to theft or destruction of essential data and information of the organization that are so crucial. Other malicious guys may attach viruses just for fun or as a prank on the organization.

Imposter organizations. Some malicious people may decide to masquerade fraudulently as other organizations in the social media by using the same name and the same details as the legit organization. This will be a big blow back to the legit organization as its name and brand can be tarnished badly.

Use of personal accounts to share crucial information on the organization may lead to leakage and theft of organization’s data and information which might be so crucial to the organization. This is because a friend in the social network can access intentionally or unintentionally and share it. The employee’s personal account can be hacked and the malicious person acquires data and information on the organization.

Porter’s Competitive Forces

A Database Management System (DBMS) is software that manages accurate, secure and consistent storage and retrieval of related data and information from a database Kedar  2009.

An entity is any object whose existence in a system is identifiable and has distinctive properties.

A record is an instance of an entity Kedar  2009, for example in the entity Student, John is a record whereas an attribute is a characteristic of a record for example in the record John, John’s age is the attribute.

John, Jane and Rachael are instances of entity Student which makes them a record. The characteristics that define and differentiate John, Jane and Rachael are Name, Class  and  Age. These characteristics are the attributes.

John is 21 years old and in Math class. Here the name John, math class and 21 years old are the characteristics of record John.

Since the introduction of the enterprise systems in the 1990s (Da Xu 2011) there implementation has increased tremendous. Most business oriented organization implement the use of an integrated enterprise systems. This is due to the more benefits the enterprise systems bring to the table. With Customer Relationship Management system managing customer intimacy, Enterprise Resource Planning system managing the resources in the business, Work Flow Management system overseeing flow of business activities and Human Resource Management systems managing the employment and training of employees incorporated with business intelligence which analyzes business data to enhance decision making no organization wants to be left behind. Enterprise Systems keep on offering more and more business processes.

 In the recent years standalone and networked Enterprise systems are being replaced with advanced Enterprise Systems like cloud computing. Cloud Enterprise Systems are offered by cloud hosting companies like SAP. All an organization needs to do is to provide SAP with their data and information and the rest is done by the cloud sourced Enterprise System. Most companies prefer cloud sourced Enterprise systems to standalone enterprise systems because, cloud sourced enterprise systems are cheap and easy to set up. In addition the cloud hosts are the ones responsible for the enterprise system security and updating the system with new technological innovations. This reduces tasks for organizations. Cloud sourcing is replacing stand alone Enterprise Systems extensively. In the near future most organizations will be using cloud sourced enterprise system.

System designer. A system designer is the expert responsible for the design phase of the system development life cycle. The design phase is where the system architecture, the non functional properties of the system and the algorithms for the system are set. Therefore the system designer is responsible for making sure that the algorithms designed in the system design phase are not human biased on any topic and on any way. The system designer ensures that the system or platform is bias free.

Platforms like Google, Face book should be as bias free as possible and should not reflect the developer’s biases on certain principles, values and opinions on certain people, topics and matters. The algorithms should be objective and fair to each and every person using the platform for whatever reason.

This is because different people have different opinions on different topics. Once one feels he or she is being discriminated on, he or she fights back causing unnecessary war and chaos. For instance, the ads for accessing arrest records that would significantly show mostly black names was inappropriate. The black people would take this as racial discrimination where black names are found in the criminal records while there are no search records for the white people, who most definitely, commit crimes. A situation like this, where black people feel cornered might cause an uprising which does not end well for the platform.

References

Rotondo, F., 2008. Utility of Web and Electronic Meeting Systems Supporting Collaborative Planning: The Case of an Agricultural Park. The Electronic City, 1, p.219.

Hussein, R., Masrek, M.N. and Karim, N.S.A., 2008. The utilization and effectiveness of intranet: a case study at selected Malaysian organizations. Communications of the IBIMA, 4, pp.200-206.

Hall, W. and Tiropanis, T., 2012. Web evolution and Web science. Computer Networks, 56(18), pp.3859-3865.

Myers, G., 2010. The discourse of blogs and wikis. A&C Black.

Edosomwan, S., Prakasan, S.K., Kouame, D., Watson, J. and Seymour, T., 2011. The history of social media and its impact on business. Journal of Applied Management and entrepreneurship, 16(3), p.79.

Statistics.[online]Available at: https://www.internetworldstats.com/[Accessed 6 May 2018].

Huang, Z. and Benyoucef, M., 2013. From e-commerce to social commerce: A close look at design features. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 12(4), pp.246-259.

Kedar, S., 2009. Database management system. Technical Publications.

Da Xu, L., 2011. Enterprise systems: state-of-the-art and future trends. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, 7(4), pp.630-640.

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