IT changed the world

Scene 1.
Mahesh was fixing the last nut in the engine case. He gave a final twist and the box spanner broke. He quickly searched his toolbox for another box spanner. Nothing. He checked with his colleague in the other workshop. No hope. He reported the matter to his boss. The engine had to be ready in two hours or production was going to be affected. The matter will go higher up. His boss asked him to check with stores if they could find one in the stock. He went to the stores and checked in the registers there. No box spanner of that size. His boss meanwhile checked his material purchase orders and found one pending with purchase department. A quick enquiry revealed that the purchase order had been issued and was awaiting finance approval for the vendor's quotation. The item was in the special category. Forty minutes gone. And here were two people wasting their time in something other than what they were supposed to do.

Scene 2.
Rathanlal was fed up of the long wait in the bank. He had given the cheque to the clerk at the counter and the clerk gave him a token. The clerk opened a heavy ledger and opened up the page belonging to Rathanlal's account. He posted it and placed in the OUT tray near his desk. A peon came and picked up the cheque and placed it on the officers IN tray. The officer signed the cheque stamped it and placed it in his OUT tray. The peon came strolling around and took the cheque to the cashiers cubicle and placed it in the IN tray there. The cashier called out the token number and with great relief Rathanlal rushed to the cash counter. The cashier slowly counted out the notes and pushed the check for Rathanlal's signature. The cash then exchanged hands. Time taken 50 minutes.

Scene 3.
Varsha was totally engrossed with the attendance register. The peon had collected it from the shop floor in the morning. The signatures of each employee had to be checked against the dates and totalled to prepare the salary of that month. The process was done on the 25th of each month. A mistake would invite the wrath of the employee. The leave availed had to be tallied against the available balance and marked as 'Without pay' if it exceeded the available quota. The process had to be repeated for all the 100 employees of the the department and sent to Personnel Dept within two days. It would then be sent to Finance for salary processing.

The Scenario Today
What is the scenario today? Information Technology has turned all the above processes on their head.

Information Technology enables all those processes which do not require human intervention to be done by computers. This leaves the employees to concentrate much more important things.

Let us take a look at the above scenarios after implementing IT.

Scene 1.
Mahesh logs into his desktop on the shop floor cubicle. The stock shows a spanner in the list. This was placed in the store a few days ago by the vendor in the company store. The vendor had already seen the low stock of certain tools on his terminal and had replenished the stock even before the materails could raise an order. Mahesh gets the box spanner within 5 minutes flat.

Scene 2.
Rathanlal stops his car at the ATM. He walks into the ATM guarded by just one security personnel. He pushes in his ATM card and types in the PIN. Pushes some buttons and out comes a wad of notes. He collects the cash and his card and is on his way in 5 minutes.

Scene 3.
Varsha clicks a few buttons on the screen on her desktop computer. A spread sheet opens up with all the details of the 100 odd employees. The software had already done its job as soon as the employee swiped in and out the flash cards daily. She clicks the OK button and the record is sent to the Vendor who takes care of the Salary.

Continued ...
See chapter 2