Information Technology Impact on my Current Profession
Information Technology (IT) is undergoing constant changes and the pace of development inevitably affects businesses in the majority of areas. Some organization relies much more on IT solutions than the others, due to the nature of their product or service than the others. It is difficult to argue, however, that changing world of IT places a lot of pressure on modern business environment. My current profession makes me a part of a complex changing process of IT as I am involved in service operations of a global organization that works with both B2B and B2C segments. Information technology, therefore, is the core of the business relationships as well as internal processes.
I work as a driver for the UPS Company and IT is an essential part of our daily operations. Being one of the largest logistics operators in the world, UPS highly relies on technological advancements and incorporates complicated global system solutions to its corporate and operational structure. In spite of the fact that my role in the company is relatively small, effectiveness and efficiency of my operations and individual contributions depend tremendously on the way IT systems operate. I can also argue that over the past years, the dependency of such companies as UPS on IT for tactical level operations, such as door-to-door delivery and transport management increased dramatically. This influenced not only the company as a whole, but each of us, creating a number of requirements to our job description and experience. Some of the most basic examples of these recent changes are related to the integration of new communication systems between drivers and the center, allocation system that allows drivers to pick up order more efficiently and respond to customer demands in a timely manner and, of course tracking solutions for company vehicles.
In my profession, communication of the driver with the central office as well as order confirmation go through integrated information system that allows visibility and tracking of each of the orders by the company management as well as the client. With that drivers became more responsible for the update and clear communication that allows feeding the system with required data. Another important evolution of the profession is the GPS tracking that today provides more security and control over transport operations, by enabling localization of each driver at any point in time. While this, surely, benefits the employees, like me and the company, such IT solutions gain more and more scale and turn from operational to marketing and strategic tool. By saying that I look at already existing value-added services that companies like UPS offer to some customers, such as GPS tracking of goods, re-distribution on the way and even stock management. By simply being able to track the location of the lorry and link it to the goods that are being transported, customer will be able to plan its stock and advice on product availability to their customers. This amazing technology just a decade ago was considered a dream and today it slowly becomes not simply competitive advantage, but a need for some of the businesses.
The above shows that IT is becoming irreplaceable in our daily work and it is likely that within 3-4 years from now my professional will become more dependent and reliant on IT systems. One of the expectations that I have is that human labor, such as transport operators and control clerks will be partially replaced by the IT integrant (Manzoor, 2012). It is difficult to argue to obvious reality that IT already penetrated all strategic levels of global and local companies and nearest future will bring it down to the tactical operations, affecting drivers, clerks and other operational staff. With that in mind the profession of driver will bring new challenges and opportunities and these challenges will have to be addressed through training and personal development.
Works Cited
Manzoor, A. (2012). Information Technology in Business. New York: Amit Manzoor. Print.
