Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, suggested the following applications for ICT – Information and Communications Technology
For knowledge work:
- Insist that communications flow through the organisation over e-mail so that you can act on news with reflex-speed
- Study sales data on-line to easily find patterns, share insights, understand overall trends and personalise service for individual customers
- Use PCs for business analysis, and shift knowledge workers into high-level thinking work about products, services and profitability
- Use digital tools to create cross-departmental virtual teams that can share knowledge and build on each other’s ideas in real time, worldwide
- Use digital systems to capture corporate history for use by anyone
- Convert every paper process to a digital process, eliminating administrative bottlenecks and freeing knowledge workers for more important tasks
For business operations:
- Use digital tools to eliminate single-task jobs or change them into value-added jobs that use the skills of a knowledge worker
- Create a digital feedback loop to improve the efficiency of physical processes and improve the quality of the products or services created
- Every employee should be able to track all the key metrics
- Use digital systems to route customer complaints immediately to the people who can improve a product or service
For commerce:
- Trade information for time
- Decrease cycle time by using digital transactions with all suppliers and partners, and transform every business process into just-in-time delivery
- Use digital delivery of sales and service to eliminate the middleman from customer transactions – and if you are a middleman, use digital tools to add value to transactions
- Use digital tools to help customers solve problems for themselves
- Reserve personal contact to respond to complex high-value customer needs
All managers should take note
As Andy Grove of Intel said: “In the future, all companies will be internet companies” – so managers who are not ICT/ digital literate will be left far below