'Data Handling' is a relatively new name given to an activity that has always gone on in business and industry. The larger the organisation then the more important it is that those activities are carried out in a standard way as defined in a 'company operations manual'. Consider the role of a sales clerk. The job entails adding the previous days sales receipts to produce a management report showing the totals for each product, filing the original documents and placing a summary in the out tray for further management action. Human intervention is required in the manual system to read and interpret the sales receipts, which undoubtedly will require some error correction, before listing the sub totals for each type of sale. Once the summaries are compiled a main total is produced. Managers don't usually require all the individual sales receipts. The 'total sales' report is placed in the out tray for onward transmission, where the document then becomes an 'input' to the 'managers data handling system'. The individual sales receipts can be thought of as a source of 'data'. It is not until the data is compiled that it becomes 'information'. We can now compare those manual processes with a simple computer system which if employed would largely automate the process. Described below is a comparison between the manual and equivalent computer functions Desktop: The desktop is the traditional working surface for administrative activities. Not only is it a place to work it is also a defined physical area for a particular task. A business might have an UK sales desk, or overseas sales desk within a department called sales. Similarly, there will be purchasing and human resources departments each with their own specialist work areas. In this way the company has a physical structure to provide a framework for the individual roles its staff undertake. We are all familiar with the Windows Desktop used on the majority of computers. This has become the modern place of work within ICT where those activities for a particular job function are brought together. What is significantly different is the ease at which these electronic desktop activities can be moved around or shared or combined with other operations. This makes the information available to every other employee in the form of 'computer files' as defined by the IT manager. Company Manual: The company manual provides a standard set of procedures to be followed by anybody undertaking the required task. Imagine the chaos if employees were allowed to decide how a particular job was carried out, each adopting a different approach. The company manual is also an essential tool used in training. The computer equivalent of the manual is the software program which defines how the operation is to be performed by requesting data in a particular order and format. At the point of data entry totals can be accumulated and input errors highlighted. Notepad: The clerk’s notepad is a working document to list the sub totals before the cumulative sales are made. On completion of the final report the notepaper can be destroyed. Within the PC there is an area of memory called a RAM (Random Access Memory) and another known as the Clipboard. It's a temporary location within which to store data. The RAM works like our clerk’s notepad it's used to temporarily store the individual data before computation. Sales receipts are placed in the 'in tray' as working documents containing sales data from the previous day. Who made the sale, what product and how many, price charged etc. In tray: Compare the manual 'in tray' method with a EPOS (Electronic Point Of Sale) terminal using a bar code scanner which is both error free and maintains sales totals. Filing cabinet: The filing cabinet is our data store. It gradually fills up with each day’s sales receipts which inevitably becomes crammed with pieces of paper. The electronic equivalent of our filling cabinet is the computer hard disk, where individual files (or more likely a single file called a 'database') can logically contain all the sales data in a fraction of the space. Data can quickly and reliably be retrieved for future analysis until it is either deleted or written over. Out Tray: Our sales clerk's work is completed when the management report appears in the out tray. Sales statistics are not available to management until the final totals are calculated. The 'out tray' on a computer is the printer or VDU (Visual Display Unit). The computer method will continually update the sales totals as they are entered making the information instantly available as management reports directly from the EPOS terminals. Enabling management decisions based on the most up-to-date information. Calculator: In our manual system a calculator is used to compile the sub totals. The heart of every computer are a number of electronic registers comprising the ALU (Arithmetic and Logic Unit). This is the equivalent of our desktop calculator. It always contains the result of the last computer operation. TEST YOUR UNDERSTANDING: For this assignment compare and contrast two systems manual and computerised. Or If you are feeling really clever consider robotics or Artificial Intelligence known as AI. Unless you have something else in mind think of a local shop where all the ordering is done manually and compare it with a similar size convenience store that is part of a larger group. Many country stores fit in this category where they take advantage of larger discounts for bulk purchasing as part of a group. Consider as an employee, which you would prefer to work in if you had no other choice and why. Also what would be the minimum level of skill you would need to work in each?
