In today's fast growing web market it is essential for every business to have a web site to maintain competitive in today’s cut throat business world. Large and small companies today will lose out on a significant amount of business if they do not have a web presence online, everything from ordering pizza to having your car fixed can be done on the internet today . In the 21st century the entire business environment will eventually gravitate to the power of internet advertising because the ones who don’t will be slung out of business.
Today technology has boosted the speed of information to a whole new level. Podcasting is just another genesis way to provide avid listeners with a broad array of interesting media from many different categories. Websites like PodOmatic have created an online community with members from all across the world to share podcasts. This is very interesting because the business world may find this innovative idea a beneficial way of advertising. A business can easily record and upload information with a click of a mouse. Podcasting can also be useful for companies that have a large product line. The business can choose to set up a podcast for each group of products to give customers a more informative overview of the products available for purchase.
However I do believe that this concept will have a difficult time evolving due to the ever popular youtube.com which provides audio and video feed. But for the daily I-pod user podcasting makes great since, listeners may download informational podcasts from there I-tunes and easily listen on the go. Another great thing about podcasting is that it is available and affordable to the average business owner who has limited advertising funds and resources. I do believe podcasting will be the future in communication and advertising online.
The Internet is the ultimate highway of information and communication. It links you to news, shopping, entertainment, friends and work; however there are many dangers involved with surfing the net. Purchasing data, contracts, organizational plans and intellectual property are just examples of data that are at risk of breach when being sent electronically. This danger is especially true when it comes to sending e-mail online. Many business emails are full of important confidential information and the last thing they need is for it to get into the wrong hands.
It is wonderful that the information age has figured out a way to securely send and receive emails without the worries and hassles of email theft. This is simply done with email encryption. Email encryption is a simple system where a user purchases certificates online to certify an account and email address. This safeguards your emails and eliminates the risk of disclosure. When you encrypt an email it’s like sealing your letter inside of an envelope, and when a receiver opens up the mail they have to decrypt the message to read it, making it secure from intruders.When I use secure email I feel safe that my message got to its source safely and effectively.
Email fraud has turned into a multimillion dollar industry today. However, this simple method is going to save businesses millions of dollars annually. Now with encrypted emailing the business environment has changed forever. Businesses may send their confidential information all across the web without the threat of theft or fraud. Secure email will save time, money, and peace of mind knowing that your personal information is safe out there endless space of the World Wide Web.
Teamwork is the core to any successful business in today’s competitive cut throat world. Whether the team members are carefully selected for their strong assets or thrown together randomly in an online class, they each have to form a bond of cohesiveness that is stronger than any other. Collaborative computing allows even the weakest teams to communicate and incorporate their ideas with a synergy that couldn’t be done before. Collaborative computing involves the teamwork of geographically dispersed individuals via electronic devices. Microsoft SharePoint is used to develop and customize workflow-enabled applications modeled after the collaborative computing concept.
Through my many years of schooling I have been apart of many groups and teams put together to accomplish a class project or assignment. No matter how hard we try, it has been impossible to choreograph all the right tasks and meetings to work to the teams full potential and highest efficiency. Now with collaborative computing we are tremendously more organized, task orientated, and overall a much stronger team.
Through the use of Sharepoint me and my group members were able to connect with each other online to achieve a common goal. As more companies engage in telecommuting, there will be an increased emphasis on the ability to reach co-workers and clients from outside of the office, so collaborative computing can also be seen as an effective way to cut costs. SharePoint seems to be the best model of collaborative computing due to the various features offered, such as document management, discussion boards, surveys and announcements. I think the use of collaborative computing is going to be very beneficial to the business environment in the 21st century.
1. How to manipulate text and extract information from other cells.
2. How to organize data by using Pivot Tables.
3. How to format Pivot Tables for better viewing.
4. How to discover which variables needed to change or reach a desired goal by using the Goal Seek tool.
Microsoft Access is an essential tool in the business world, especially at the upper management level. A manager needs to know the most efficient and reliable way to store company data and also be able to easily access that data quickly and accurately. Microsoft Access allows you to do all of these task and much more.
While completing this project I learned about many features on Microsoft access. The first was how to input and store data into access using the import data feature. To prevent entering incorrect data I used a few different mechanisms, these were Input Masks, Validation Rules and Lookups Input Masks. These simple features enforce how the data is entered in the database, for example, in this project the input mask was used to enter telephone numbers in a format such as (area code) Phone-Number. In a business this simple task could easily save you hours of data entry. Validation Rules are used to set a valid range of data that can be entered, and in this project we used this rule to enforce that Zip codes could only be between the range of 32003 to 34997. Lookups are used to allow only values that already exist into another table, this allows the one entering data a selected dropdown list of options to choose from which speeds up the process tremendously.
In the business environment relationships are everything and in Microsoft Access there are no exceptions, because relationships between multiple tables completely transform the database‘s functions. I learned how to store data efficiently to prevent duplicate data from being entered and then use them in Table Relationships. By using table relationships, MS Access can combine data into a table or a report by using common fields in other databases to match all the data relevant to that common field. In this project we had a table with movie rental stores and movies, and had another table with customer history rentals. We can use the movies as a common field to create another table to show when and where each customer rented a specific movie, all of this without having to input any data repeatedly.
To retrieve the data, MS Access uses Queries and Reports. I learned that a query is a mechanism to display data from multiple tables into a single table. In this project we issued a query to display all the movie rental stores that had the PG-13 rated movies. Queries can also be use to update multiple records at a time or for a more professional way to retrieve data MS Access has a feature to create Reports. Reports use queries and formatting to gather information in a way that is easy for anybody to read and understand and looks good at the same time.
This project has taught me how to use the many useful tools that Microsoft Access has to offer, like tables, queries, relationships and reports. All of these database features can be used to effectively and efficiently help a business store and manage huge amounts of information, which can help save valuable time and money. I plan to confidently use these tools from Microsoft Access in all of my future business endeavors.
