John is a sales representative selling tools to garden centres and DIY stores. He travels 1000's of miles a months to see new and existing customers; he has always travelled around with a diary, an address book and large road atlases. He likes to be punctual but sometimes he finds it hard to locate new clients or gets stuck in traffic. Armed with a calculator and the robust but latest sales catalogue he travels to each client. He spends 6 hours a day for 4 days a week on the move, then an extra 2 hours on those days sorting that day's administration. Then on a Friday he spends it in the office to finalise all administration for the whole week.
Personal Digital Assistant / Smartphone
A personal Digital assistant is different from a smartphone but that makes these two appliances differ from each other. The smartphone is able send and receive calls and texts. Apart from that factor they both perform the same tasks. Owning a smartphone would kill so many birds with only a large but ultra-thin stone! I am only going to focus on the appropriate capabilities to Johns situation.
Advantages
Already the fact of having a smartphone would then eliminate the annoying factor of having to carry around change to enable him to use payphones. It would be cheaper easier and more convenient if John had a mobile phone / smartphone. Having this smart phone would also eliminate the fact that he would need to carry a diary, an address book and a calculator. The beauty of having a smartphone is that already comes with a calender and organiser. For John it means he can store all of his appointments on the phone which means the need for lugging around a large diary will be unnecessary. On most smartphones the facility for being able to store details of people you know and with HTC it allows you to actually allows you to make a small address book for each contact in the phone-book. This includes allowing you to store email addresses of the individual, different number locations and as already mentioned the house address of the individual. This would be perfect for John because it would mean not having to carry an address book as well. As for the calculator the smartphone will generally have a basic calculator but with some they also provide you with a scientific as well. If not then a calculator can be downloaded from your phones app store. Owning a smartphone will definitely be beneficial for John as three rather large items that he would usually need to carry around will all be compacted down into something the size of a phone. Having all these capabilities on his smart phone will moreover speed business actions up and make John's actions more fluid.
GPS - Global Positioning System
A Global Positioning System was first used by the British army to help them locate enemy locations and also ease their job of moving over areas of ground which to them were not familiar. Nowadays it is more readily available to the general population and they are rather cheap compared to when they were first put out on the market.
Advantages
This piece of technology would help John be punctual 99% of the time. If John prides himself on the fact that he likes to be punctual then he should put some money aside to purchase a GPS. The reason being it would help him be more punctual because it resolves both problems that are presented to him when driving to a new or existing client. The occasional awkward to find client won't be as much of a problem anymore due to the fact that if he put a client's postcode and house number in the GPS it will take him straight to the client's front door, no more trying to find the road in an area in which he has never been before. Also when stuck in traffic on the way to an existing client's house it probably frustrates John because he likes to be punctual but with the GPS he need not worry about this problem. A modern day Hi-Tec GPS can find out the route in which there is the most traffic a cut it out of the route, also if the route he is taking has suddenly become congested then the GPS can look for a new route that would cut the journey time. If John got a GPS then he would be happier and the preparation time for a route would be a lot less, it would also provide his customers with better customer service therefore potentially increasing his customer base.
Laptop
A laptop PC is a good bit of equipment to have when you run a business, in addition it is more useful than having a desktop PC. The reason for this is because it can easily be carried to destinations of clients and it is readily available for use. Laptops have been around for many years now at they are becoming more and more Hi-Tec, for a laptop to stay current it's advisable to get a laptop that is more advanced than for the time it is present. This way when years pass the technology incorporated stays Hi-Tec for longer.
Advantages
The amount of administration that John performs in a week would be dramatically decreased because he would be able to do it while he was with the client. This is because computers are usually good at finding a shorter or quicker way of performing tasks when as and when supplied with the right software. Also if John was to write documents out it would not be as neat as typing it up on the computer. Another reason why it would speed John's administration up is the fact that when he has created documents on each client it can be saved and stored on the laptop's hard drive therefore enabling him to retrieve that information at any time. As well as that with the right software he could download a catalogue onto his laptop which means there would be no need for him to carry around a robust catalogue around again reducing the amount of objects that he would usually carry around.
Internet
The Internet was first developed as a way of communication, and a method of sending data by the US military. It was specifically designed to not have a 'central' location. It was developed in response to the USSR launching Sputnik into space. Nowadays the general public use the Internet whether it be for business purposes, just out of interest or even do your weekly shop! Also now you can get USB drive that you can put into your computer and it gives you Internet data from the service provider. These are called Internet Dongles.
Advantages
John would benefit a great deal from using the Internet. If he wanted to cut the amount of hours that he spends on the road a day then he could set up a website and put and online version of his catalogue on the website for his clients to look at any time they wanted. This would also save John carrying around a big catalogue with him and also it would save him money on printing as well. If his customers do not have an Internet enabled facility at their address then he would be able to take his laptop to them and use his Internet Dongle as a source of Internet and use it to show them the catalogue. If all else fails then he would always have his smartphone and contract to fall back on as that is able to go on the Internet through the phone's service provider.
Disadvantages of having the latest Technology
Along with most of the modern technology something is bound to go wrong. There are many things that could happen and stop John doing his job as efficient as what he would like. The most likely occurances would be an item of technology that he uses being broken in some way shape or form. This would be bad because having the latest and greatest technology is quite expensive and if anything got broken the it would be quite costly to get it fixed. Another unfortunate occurance could be that constant use of the internet could lead to a getting a virus or equivalent that could do serious damage to the computer. This would result in the computer having to be wiped of all its contents and there could be valuable information for John. It can be avoided by always backing up all information on his laptop but this sort of occurance always happens when you least expect it and takes you by surprise. With modern technology it needs to be constantly charged on a regular basis, this could be quite a hassle considering it should make Johns job easier. On the other hand he needs to ensure all of his electronics are fully charged before he leaves his house, either that or he would need to take chargers for each of his electrical appliences which is more matter to carry.
