By  Steven Suryanto / 0912200161
01MAM

ICT (information and communication technology) is no longer something that only appears on organisational wish lists. Well structured ICT is the backbone that will enable your organisation to deliver services effectively and efficiently, helping you reach more people and ultimately do more with your money.
With ICT you can:
•    raise your organisation’s profile
•    keep abreast of current developments and legislation in your field
•    manage and organise information more easily
•    accurately monitor your finances
•    securely maintain your users’ contact details
•    understand who is using your service and how you can widen your reach
•    enable service users to support one another through online communities
•    save costs and operate more effectively allowing staff to work remotely and flexibly
Is ICT really helping?
Whatever you do with your ICT, keep your eye on the real reason why you’re doing it. Make sure you’re clear about the overall goals of your organisation and that they are guiding the decisions and choices you’re making.
When you decide what to do with ICT you must be able to answer:
•    “Does this help us achieve our goals? How? If not, why are we doing it?”
•    “Does it save us time or money if we do this? How? If not, why are we doing it?”
•    “Does it help us do new and more valuable things? How? If not, why are we doing it?”
Rather than follow the make-and-sell strategies of industrial-age giants, today’s successful companies focus on sensing and responding to rapidly changing customer needs. In order to survive in this sense-and-respond world, big companies need to consider a strategy called “managing by wire.” In aviation, flying by wire means using computer systems to augment a pilot’s ability to assimilate and react to rapidly changing environmental information. In a similar way, managing by wire is the capacity to run a business by managing its informational representation.
Here are some examples of how ICT could help you achieve your goals:
1. Better service delivery
•    Make it easier for people to communicate with your organisation, using email, telephone, your website and text messaging.
•    Reduce missed appointments by using text messaging to confirm times and remind clients.
•    Use remote monitoring systems to ensure the safety of tenants or residents.
•    Take laptops and other mobile equipment to community centres to provide computer and internet access to support community activities.
•    Use text messaging to create an anonymous sexual health service for teenagers.
•    Provide Internet access at your community centre for those people who don’t have it at home.
2. Better access to information for managers
•    Collect, manage and report performance information to help run your organisation better.
•    Prepare information for monitoring and report to funders.
•    Identify trends, problems and possible solutions.
3. Better financial management
•    Accounting software records income and expenditure and helps take care of VAT, tax and PAYE and the requirements of the Charity Commission.
•    Use spreadsheets to manage project budgets and produce reports for trustees, managers and funders.
4. Better client records
•    Keep client contact information in a database on your network to support shared work inside the organisation as well as with partners, funders and other outside bodies.
•    Use remote access services to enable staff to access up-to-date information when visiting clients.
•    Monitoring data can be collected from the client record system rather than collated manually.
5. Better information for your community
•    Computers and the Internet can help to collect, manage and publish useful information to support telephone, online or face-to-face advice services.
•    Information can be provided 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
•    Online information can support community campaigns, such as accessing government statistics to back your case or tracking the voting record of your local MP on a key issue.
•    Using an interactive website means members of your community can check information and update it when they see mistakes
6. Better staff development
•    Encourage staff and volunteers to use the Internet to keep up to date with key issues in your field.
•    Encourage staff and volunteers to share ICT skills and ‘top tips’ to help the organisation run more smoothly.
•    Online learning courses can be a flexible, lowcost way of improving capabilities and knowledge within your networks.
•    Share knowledge with peers informally through email and online forums.
•    Subscribe to specialist online information resources such as magazines, or news from professional bodies.
7. Better fundraising
•    Use the web and email to identify potential funders and research your bids.
•    Set up a payments system on your website to make it easier for people to donate money.
•    Use free checklists and professional advice from fundraising sites to improve your fundraising skills.
8. Better external communications
•    Use desktop publishing to design and print leaflets, flyers, stationery, newsletters, annual reports, posters, t-shirts and postcards.
•    Set up and run websites, email lists or online discussion forums to promote your cause or make links with potential partners.
•    Deliver high-quality presentations using a laptop, digital projector and PowerPoint.
•    Run campaigns and mobilise support using print, email and the web.
•    Use video to overcome literacy barriers.
•    Run a local radio station through a website.
•    Tell local stories and raise awareness of local concerns through a community website, using podcasts, bulletin boards or photo-sharing.
9. Better internal communications
•    Share information and work files with colleagues on a server.
•    Use remote access, email, Internet telephone services and video conferencing so that staff and volunteers can be flexible and work on multiple sites.
•    Make sure induction packs, internal policies and other key documents can be found easily using an intranet.
•    Help trustees, volunteers, partners, funders and other stakeholders feel part of your decision-making process by using email, bulletin boards, etc.
10. Better administration
•    Manage your information in a more methodical way and spend less time finding things by using a shared file server.
•    Use mail merge to save time when sending out large numbers of documents – whether in the post or by email.
•    Use shared calendars and email to schedule meetings.
•    Save time and money by sharing resources such as printers, rather than transferring information from PC to PC.
•    A web-based timesheet system enables remote staff to log time spent on projects.
Any planning process is a tool, a way of looking ahead to anticipate what’s going to happen and how you’re going to respond to it. It’s a way of sharing ideas with other people; establishing, clarifying or confirming shared goals; exploring hopes and fears; and identifying what you want to achieve together.
In  small organisations, all the planning and management processes may be handled by the same person – perhaps the only employee. A separate ICT plan might be a bit excessive, but ICT should at least be given its own section in your business plan.
Wireless ICT
Flexibility and responsesiveness now rule the marketplace. Rather that follow the make and sell strategy of industrialage giants, today’s successful companies focus on sensing and responding to rapidly changing customer needs. Information technology has driven much to this dramatic shift by vastly reducing the constraints imposed by time and space in acquiring, interpreting and acting on information.
Coherent corporate behavior needs more than blockbuster applications and network connections; it must be governed by a coherent information model that codifies “how we do things around here,” and “how we change how we do things around here. Much more than just backup, WWAN is ideal for primary connectivity for lower bandwidth applications in situations where wired networks are unavailable or not feasible. It is the ideal solution for obtaining connectivity in the locations where you need it, such as point-of-sale locations, kiosks and ATMs, vehicles, branch offices, and remote measurement and monitoring equipment.
The benefit for applying wireless management to all corporate bussines process :
1.    Fast and flexible
Wireless WAN (WWAN) Connectivity can help your business stay connected, reduce  installation intervals, and enable data transmission and transaction processing from almost anywhere business takes you. Much more than just backup, WWAN is ideal for primary connectivity for lower bandwidth applications in situations where wired networks are unavailable or not feasible. It is the ideal solution for obtaining connectivity in the locations where you need it, such as point-of-sale locations, kiosks and ATMs, vehicles, branch offices, and remote measurement and monitoring equipment.
RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) combined with mobile computing and Web technologies provide an effective way for organizations to identify and manage their assets. Mobile computers, with integrated RFID readers, can now deliver a complete set of tools that eliminate paperwork, give positive proof of identification and prove attendance. Errors are virtually eliminated as this approach removes manual data entry. Web based management tools allow organizations to monitor their assets and make management decisions from anywhere in the world. Web based applications now mean that third parties, such as manufacturers and contractors can be granted access to update asset data, including for example, inspection history and transfer documentation online ensuring that the end user always has accurate, real-time data. Organizations within the Plant industry are already using RFID tags combined with a mobile asset management solution to record and monitor the location of their assets, their current status, whether they have been maintained and most importantly if they comply with HSE regulations. Fitters within depots and those working remotely on project/client sites use mobile computers to complete and record job instructions. These completed work records are then synchronized with a web based database allowing support and administration staff to respond accordingly.

.Appliance of RFID in corporate :
•    Inventory Control
Inventory can be updated in real time without product movement, scanning or human involvement. Our fully automated system allows inventory status to be determined, and shipping & receiving documents to be generated automatically. The system could also trigger automatic orders for products that are low in inventory.

•    Container and Pallet Tracking
Automatic tracking system can identify and keep track of goods that are located anywhere in the warehouse or in any other part of the building. The amount of idle inventory tied up in storage can be greatly reduced through effective use of the information provided by the system. It can also reduce theft and other forms of inventory shrinkage by immediately alerting the operations manager when a product is moved from its assigned area.
RFID solutions can also reduce the time and cost for counting stock as it enters the warehouse by collecting the data automatically and virtually eliminating the need for manual intervention.
•    Manufacturing Lines
Assembly line personnel could use an RFID reader to verify which processes have been completed, to determine which inspections or tests are required and to automatically update the central production database. And production planners and inventory control personnel could use the ActiveWave RFID tags to automatically update the customer database and finished goods inventory, using an RFID reader and PC, rather than manually creating data entry sheets, which could introduce errors into the system.
•    Equipment or Personel Tracking in hospital
An RFID system can be used to track patients, doctors and expensive equipment in hospitals in real time. RFID tags can be attached to the ID bracelets of all patients, or just patients requiring special attention, so their location can be tracked continuously. ActiveWave RFID technology can also provide an electronic link for wirelessly communicating patient data. An instant assessment of critical equipment and personnel locations is also possible through RFID technology.

2.    Diverse
Whether you need to back up an existing network, open a branch office, or deploy remote applications,  it’s important that you have consistent capabilities and flexible functionality. If your primary network goes down, what’s your backup? If it’s a landline connection, you may find out too late that it suffered the same fate—leaving your business offline and out of touch. Wireless can provide an ideal backup solution for mission-critical data. When a landline outage occurs, you have the added confidence of knowing that you have true diversity via wireless data network. Plus, with a WWAN solution, you can leverage your existing security options for network-to-network connectivity.
3.    Economical
WWAN connectivity makes network connectivity not only feasible, but costeffective. New locations can be connected to your corporate network, and existing sites can be moved, without the typical landline installation intervals or added costs. WWAN can wirelessly enable almost any part of your business, such as:
• Point-of-sale locations
• Kiosks and ATMs
• Vehicles
• Branch offices
• Remote measurement and monitoring equipment
Wireless WAN Connectivity  the affordable way to improve the flexibility and continuity of your company‘s network, leveraging the largest national high-speed data network.
No Corporation has implemented a fully integrated manage by wire system yet. But a growing number of companies like Brooklyn Union Gas and Global Insurance are showing that large and complicated business operation can be captured in an information technology structure and used to govern business behavior.The imminent arrival of a new generation of enterprise modelingtools makes a manage by wire strategy plausible.But it will be management’s skill in codifying a competitive information model that will determine its success Moving forward, asset management will play an ever-increasing role in corporate capital management and asset utilization. These wirelessly connected devices will help reduce operating expenses and improve business productivity. Through the Internet, this next-generation technology will enable powerful new levels of asset management and permit companies to connect a broader array of devices to their IT and accounting infrastructures.

In any organisation good internal communications are vital so that everyone sees where ICT fits into the bigger picture:
•    Managers will want to know how investment in ICT can help deliver strategic goals, so ICT staff must recognise the need to focus on effectiveness and efficiency.
•    ICT staff will have technical issues to resolve before detailed plans can be made, so managers must allow reasonable time for plans to be fully costed, options assessed and timescales estimated.
Remember that you may need to review key parts of your plans more than once: look back at your key organisational goals regularly to remember why you’re doing all this work and focus on priorities.This also helps people to bring different perspectives without creating conflicts that prevent progress.
It is vital that an ICT plan is not prepared in a darkened room by someone who thinks they are the ICT expert. A small working party of staff, volunteers, trustees, clients or partners can help create a sense that ICT is part of the organisational glue.

Reference
[1]    Harvard Bussines Review (2006) Bussiness Value of IT
[2]    National Council For Voluntary Organisations (2008) Why ICT Is Important [Online] Available at: http://www.icthub.org.uk/whyict/
[3]    Constien, Scott D. (2008) Next Generation Wireless Technology Advance Asset Management [Online] Available at:
http://www.industrial-embedded.com/articles/id/?3675
[4]    Active Wave, Your Total RFID Solution [Online] Available at:
http://www.activewaveinc.com/applications_overview.php