USE OF ICT IN BUSINESS MANAGEMENT
INTRODUCTION:
ICT Stands for "Information Communication Technologies." ICT refers to technologies that provide access to information through telecommunications. It is similar to Information Technology (IT), but focuses primarily on communication technologies. This includes the Internet, wireless networks, cell phones, and other communication mediums. In the past few decades, information and communication technologies have provided society with a vast array of new communication capabilities. For example, people can communicate in real-time with others in different countries using technologies such as instant messaging, voice over IP (VoIP), and video-conferencing. Social networking websites like Facebook allow users from all over the world to remain in contact and communicate on a regular basis. Modern information and communication technologies have created a "global village," in which people can communicate with others across the world as if they were living next door. For this reason, ICT is often studied in the context of how modern communication technologies affect society.
Information and communications technology applications can be found in practically every area of life; they shape our private lives and our work. But while there is extensive and detailed media coverage of the changes in private communication, the significant and frequently far-reaching impact that ICT has on the world of work receives far less attention. ICT is also becoming increasingly important on a macroeconomic level. Not only is the ICT industry a steadily growing sector with a high economic significance, ICT-based solutions and technologies also make a valuable and very important contribution to value-creation in other sectors, e.g. trade or manufacturing industries .countries, is the major industry. More than 50 per cent of the labour is working in this sector and its industria land commercial branches. In these countries, also more than 50 per cent of the house holds‘ incomes are spent for low quality and value foods; in efficiency of the agricultural products marketing system is the starting point of these problems. Today, in most developing countries, more production is only a part of the agricultural sector’s mission and the other mission is agricultural products marketing because distributing the agricultural products is the marketing systems responsibility. Agricultural products marketing system, by having more abilities, in one hand, can increase the producer and consumer welfare and, in the other hand, can make new job opportunities. According to the ICT capabilities in the economical, social, and cultural development of the rural societies, it is considered by the global organizations as one the most important tools for reducing poverty in villages, increasing the services, and expanding the rural industries (Mohammadi et al, 2007).The use of information and communications technology is one of different strategies exists for improving agricultural marketing. ICT consist of various collections of resources and technical tools that are used for connecting, spreading, storing and managing information. In other words, ICT
represents the collection of hardware and software that is used for producing, preparing, transferring and storing data via devices such as computers, radios, televisions, etc., and it includes an extensive scope of traditional and modern media (Lashgarara et al , 2010).Using ICT causes fast accessibility to the market, rising selection power, improving communication, identifying markets, saving in time and energy, improving marketing, and business costs reduction (King et al , 2003).Generally, according to the given definitions for agricultural products marketing, there are two clear viewpoints. The first one, which is done in between the producers centers to the consumers. The second one indicates that the agricultural products marketing starts at the time in which farmers plan for their products. Agricultural products marketing, in this study, is a set of services from producers to consumers including product design, crop production and harvesting, packing, transportation, processing, distribution, sale, and transferring data from the products area to the market and vice versa(Alimoradian and Dehyouri, 2006). For applying ICT in agricultural marketing attention to some of the requirements is needed, such as:-New ICT such as Internet, mobile, etc should be more provided.-Establishment and operation of databases and educational programes especially for rural people is needed.-Increasing knowledge of clienteles in relation to capabilities and advantages of ICT-Providing required contexts for diffusion of electronic commerce-Encouraging private sector for investing in ICT and more delivery services (Rasekhi, 2003).-Developing financial infrastructures-Developing legal indicators (Gregg and Irani,2004).Some of scholars believed that most of developing countries for using ICT in agricultural marketing face problems such as developing infrastructures, inadequacy in experienced experts, lack of notice and awareness of governments to give importance for using ICT in rural projects, illiteracy of people in rural areas, high cost of hardware, lack of sufficient support of private sector by public sector for more participation in agricultural rural marketing(Aftab, 2007).Hamedanlo (2009) reported that lack of content and for rural society was the most limiting factor and human resources capacity, coordination weakness,, poor infrastructures, risk of investmentand weakness of current policies were barriers and problems of developing the rural ICT centers. Rsoli-Azar (2004) signified to the barriers such as lack of tools and equipments for having access to the computer, low speed of electronic lines, high costs, and manager’s lack of attention. Khosravi (2003) reported that consideringcompatibility of ICT tools with the clienteles needs was very important. High cost of using ICT was one of the most important barriers in the study of Tiamiyu (2000). Kunda and Laurence (2000) indicated that many of developing countries forusing ICT in marketing face shortage of experienced experts and poor infrastructures. Poor programming, incompatibility to needs of clienteles and lack of support of mangers are obstacles perceived by Whittaker (1999)..... According to Iran’s agriculture actual and potential capabilities such as having about 37million acres cultivatable lands, 118 billion m2 accessible water resources, 14 various climates, providing 26 per cent GDP,25 per cent employment(in this sector) , and 26 per cent nonoil export, that is an important and critical role in the country’s economy (Anonymous, 2005). Thus, evaluating the deficiencies of the agricultural sector like agriculture products marketing system is necessary so that problems would be solved through this evaluation. This study is aimed to identifying major challenges and implication for applying ICT in Agricultural products marketing.
THE USES OF ICT IN BUSINESS MANAGEMENT
Business is a legal entity whereby people engage in buying and selling in order to make profit. Information communication technology has been useful in our business today and have improved our Business life. In old days information and communication in Business is only based within your locality but now, with the help of ICT, there are more improvement on our business management example, with the help of ICT one can embark on a business with someone in overseas. Now with the use of ICT one can obtain all the necessary information needed in a Business. All with the use of ICT, one can communicate effectively with his/her business partner and with the help of ICT money cannot be carrying about rather than doing money transfer. With the help of ICT, one can easily deposit money in the bank easily instead of carrying it at home. It reduces accidental death involved in transportation. ICT in business reduces stress and saves time. ICT in Business saves preserves energy and makes life easier for the business men.
BUSINESS TRANSACTION MANAGEMENT
Business transaction management (BTM), also known as business transaction monitoring, application transaction profiling or user defined transaction profiling, is the practice of managing information technology (IT) from a business transaction perspective. It provides a tool for tracking the flow of transactions across IT infrastructure, in addition to detection, alerting, and correction of unexpected changes in business or technical conditions. BTM provides visibility into the flow of transactions across infrastructure tiers, including a dynamic mapping of the application topology.
Using BTM, application support teams are able to search for transactions based on message context and content – for instance, time of arrival or message type – providing a way to isolate causes for common issues such as application exceptions, stalled transactions, and lower-level issues such as incorrect data values.
The ultimate goal of BTM is to improve service quality for users conducting business transactions while improving the effectiveness of the IT applications and infrastructure across which those transactions execute.[2] The main benefit of BTM is its capacity to identify precisely where transactions are delayed within the IT infrastructure. BTM also aims to provide proactive problem prevention and the generation of business service intelligence for optimization of resource provisioning and virtualization.
A number of factors have led to the demand for the development of BTM software:
Modern applications have become more complex, modular, distributed, interdependent and sensitive to environmental conditions.
IT infrastructure has become a complex multi-tier (see multitier architecture) environment.
The rise of service-oriented architecture in systems development.
The proliferation of service level agreements.
BTM solutions capture all of the transaction instances in the production environment and as such can be used for monitoring as well as for analysis and planning. Some applications include:[6]
Outage avoidance and problem isolation: Identification and isolation of tier-specific performance and availability issues.
Service level management: Monitoring of SLAs and alerting of threshold breaches both at the end-user and infrastructure tier level.
Infrastructure optimization: Modification of the configuration of data center infrastructure to maximize utilization and improve performance.
Capacity planning: Analysis of usage and performance trends in order to estimate future capacity requirements.
Change management: Analysis of the impact of change on transaction execution.
Cloud management: Track the end-to-end transaction flow across both cloud (private, hybrid, public) and dedicated (on-premises, off-premises) infrastructure.
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
ICT simply means "Information Communication Technologies." ICT refers to technologies that provide access to information through telecommunications. It is similar to Information Technology (IT), but focuses primarily on communication technologies. This includes the Internet, wireless networks, cell phones, and other communication mediums. In the past few decades, information and communication technologies have provided society with a vast array of new communication capabilities. For example, people can communicate in real-time with others in different countries using technologies such as instant messaging, voice over IP (VoIP), and video-conferencing. Social networking websites like Facebook allow users from all over the world to remain in contact and communicate on a regular basis. Modern information and communication technologies have created a "global village," in which people can communicate with others across the world as if they were living next door.
REFEERENCES
James Powell (20 October 2009). "End-to-End Transaction Tracking with Business Transaction Management". Enterprise Systems. Retrieved 6 June 2010.
"Workflow Management". TechNewsWorld. 30 June 2009. Retrieved 6 June 2010.
"Business Transaction Management Portal". August 2010. Retrieved 25 August 2010.