Tool Man

A PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) will benefit John in several ways – he can use this in order to store documents such as customer receipts and receipts from stock purchases. Also, a calendar could be used in order to plan sales and other meetings. Furthermore, the PDA could double-up as a mobile phone if the right one was purchased – this would allow John to make important phone calls and keep contacts with names, numbers and addresses of clients. He would also be able to connect to the internet using a PDA and he could therefore search for products, send emails etc. Calculations would also be easy to make as they could be done using the PDA. This would mean that John would no longer need; the address book, a diary, small coins for phones, bulky sales catalogue(s), or a calculator.


Using GPS could benefit him also, as he could plot routes to clients, speed cameras etc can be located and also, it can calculate the quickest route which would help him in being punctual and would also result in John no longer requiring the large road atlas.

A laptop with certain software and internet installed would also benefit John greatly in improving his working style with the use of I.T. John could install specialised software along with basic software packages such as Microsoft office in order to further his business – he could create and maintain databases that contain customer data, spreadsheets to calculate expenses, use mail merge to create bulk letters etc. This would be of use to John as these can be created once and added to or altered – this means that he would not need to spend an entire day in the office, as all administration and sales would have been carried out more effectively by him after a sale. Furthermore, John can display items etc to customers which means that he no longer needs to carry around the hefty sales book with him every time.

Although all of these factors improve his work life greatly, there are some disadvantages. Using purely IT to store customer details may prove to be ineffective as a computer malfunction could occur and the customers could be lost. Therefore, back-up of information would have to be implemented every night in order to ensure the safety of details – if the data is lost, he could get fined because of the Data Protection Act. Also, John may become to dependent on the internet and use of I.T – if the battery on his phone/PDA or laptop runs out, he could not go to the client without first retrieving his old means of contacting – A-Zs, road atlas etc. This would therefore take more time and effort than taking the existing means with him in the first place. Furthermore, GPS systems can often mistake other areas as roads – for example, pedestrian walkways etc. This could cause some issues when John is travelling to clients and could result in making him later rather than earlier. Although all of these are issues, with the right precautions, John could easily overcome many issues relating to the use of I.T.