post responses

Review your classmates' posts from earlier in the week and provide comments to at least two of your colleagues. Your response to your colleagues should include your perspectives on each of the following:

• Provide insights you gained about how organizations can use technology and business information systems to promote positive change at the organizational level, the local community, or on a global scale.
• Examine how the trends identified by your colleague could affect your professional or personal practices or an organization or industry with which you are familiar. What opportunities might there be?
• Share your insights about the trends identified by your colleague, and offer additional ideas about the effect they might have and challenges that could occur.
• Expand upon the trends presented by your colleague, and offer other opportunities, solutions, or implications that your colleague may not have shared.
• POST1

• As we come to the end of the course, I am thinking back and realizing that they are many things that I learned throughout the course.  One of the concept that’s really stuck out to me was the business continuity plan.  A business continuity plays a very important role in an organization’s risk management process (Hatton, Grimshaw, Vargo, Seville, 2016). It is basically a plan that answers the question, “what do we do if disaster strikes?”. In my current workplace, I do not know if we have a business continuity plan in place or not. I find that surprising. I feel that it is important for every employee to at least be aware of the plan, even if it does not affect them directly. In the future, I am going to make sure that the plan is acknowledged, updated, and practiced as well.

  Another concept that stuck out to me is the number of data management storage systems that are out there. I decided to focus on the Cloud Storage system. Prior to completing the assignment, I did not know much about the Cloud Storage system. Now, I understand that the Cloud Storage is a service that provides storage resource service through remote storage servers derived from cloud computing. One of the greatest aspects about this system is that it works with many devices, application domains, and service forms. I suggested this system for the Wal-Mart corporation because I felt that they would stand to benefit greatly from utilizing it.

  One trend that I feel will heavily impact on my organization’s business model in the near future is social media. These days, social media is EVERYWHERE. Individuals use it, but business use it as well. With the increase of technology, our organization among many other is going to have to increase security. From training to new innovations, security is going to have to continue to change in order to keep up with the ever changing technology force.

  Another trend that is sure to make an impact my organization’s business model is the increase of storage systems that are available. With technology and innovation on the increase, I feel that there will be more and more systems available to choose from. 

  In order to a positive social change, my organization can use technology in a way that makes business process as easy and convenient for employees. For example, a few years ago, I add to physically come into work in order to submit my time for the week. If for some reason, I could not come in, I had to wait until I could, which would in turn cause me to get paid late. Now, we have an app that allows me to submit my time, simply from my phone. So, if I am sick and cannot come into work, as long as I have my phone, I can submit my time. I am predicting that my organization is going to stay on this path and continue to employ technology in ways that make it easy to balance home and work life. 

  POST2

  I was most surprised by business continuity planning because I have not seen or heard what my organization's plan is if there is ever a disaster. I know we have information in multiple places, and we save documents, but I do not know what we would do if there were a disaster. The purpose of the Business Continuity Plan is to cover all the “what-if” questions regarding data storage and organization locations if there is ever a disaster. BCP’s have recovery steps to make sure critical IT operations can resume as quickly as possible with little to no loss (Ahmed, 2009). I think all departmental personnel should know what the plan is or at least have a general idea of what to do if there was ever a data issue.

              Learning about organizational codes of ethics and codes of conduct was an important piece of information. I could relate with the readings because working in employee relations; I must enforce the code of ethics and conduct and tender corrective action to employees when they violate the codes. I find it helpful for my role to learn about other organizations and best practices to compare to the way I enforce the policies.   

  Cloud-based systems will most likely have a significant impact on my organization in the next five years. My organization is slowly starting to switch over to new systems that are more user-friendly and easier to access in any location. We have many positions that could work from home, but our systems make it somewhat complicated, so being able to access what is on a desktop at work, on a secure cloud, would make a lot working from home less of a hassle. For example, if my organization had a cloud-based system, when I worked from home I would have access to the “share drive” and my personal work drive instead of only the share drive.

   Data security is a huge trend that I think my organization’s business model is going to take a deeper dive into as far as training and education go. Currently, our IT department is more reactive than proactive. I am sure they have all the appropriate firewalls and perimeter protection, but the employees should be educated on what to keep an eye out for when using the computer. Leaver (2011) suggested that IT leaders embrace change to and new approaches to not only set the new standards but also empower the business and provide guardrails and education. I work in healthcare, and the last thing we want is a hacker getting into our system by an employee unknowingly clicking on a bad link and opening the hacker to protected health information and holding it for ransom.

  I think my organization can employ technology and business information systems to promote positive social change within the organization by using the technology to show what an organization is doing. Social media is huge, and everyone is always posting, but instead of having employees posting selfies of him or herself at their desk maybe they could post about what the organization is doing to help the community. My organization just had a drive for filling up reusable bags with clothes for homeless people in the area. The emergency department at our hospital cares for a lot of homeless people, and before they leave, they give them new clothes and/or shoes. Each department was challenged to fill up as many “Go Bags” as they could. It would have been great to share that our organization does that with the community, or even have people in the community donate because anything that we had extra of when to a local homeless shelter. I am proud to work for my organization, and I think it would be good for them to share what they do to give back to the community because other organizations might start doing more to give back as well.