Why Users Resist Changes due to Implementation of Automation Systems - Essay Example

Automation Systems New generations of computer technology will continue to affect the processing of data and information. (Lucas,1981) "Our challengeis to use process automation to support users in performing their tasks more effectively without getting in their way". Automation in terms of collecting of data continues to become easier and easier , processing is getting faster and faster. And one of the best improvements that new technology brings us is that computers continue to become easier to use. But before computes were invented, data was collected and processed by hand variety of tedious ways. And often had to be copied and recopied more than once before it could be processed into information. According to the book of ( Mazzuchelli, 1985) "The net effect of the tremendous increase in processing power provided by the computer system is that more data can be processed faster than ever before." Which means that all information you need in your job to make decisions will be quickly available, a necessity in today's rapidly changing business environment. Business establishments implement computer systems as part of daily transactions. Some firms faces problems especially implementing an apparent solution to a problem often causes other, unanticipated problems. As automation systems replaces energy as society's man resource, many people are concerned that too much emphasis has been put on what the computer can do to streamline business and too little on how it may affect the quality of our lives. Some reasons why users resist of changes due to implementation of automation systems. One reason may be the initial cost. In a large company, it is difficult to track and fairly allocate the costs of the computer processing facility to the many different departments based on individual departmental use. Also, departments at remote locations may feel that their information needs are not being met. Some were reluctant to use the new system for fear that they would have to spend for the software, computer maintenance, diskettes, computer paper, printer ribbons, just as they had to do for the paper and a pen needed on their job. Hardware and software costs can become high when a company's departments are spread over many distant locations. Proper accountability and planning for this project would simply help the company cope on this problem. Using a decentralized computer facilities would help the company to use less sophisticated and less expensive communications hardware and software. To assure that they would be able to use the change in automation. Second, Unfamiliar to the new system. A computer specialists is responsible for the design of the automated system ended up being responsible for working in many areas of the company with which they were unfamiliar. And also users of the new automated system are not trained well they hardly understand the system. The reason is that the system is not user friendly. A reason to resist for the changes. As a result, the specialists often took a lot of time to understand the processing requirements of a new department. This problem has a great impact to the new users as it caused delays in a project and sometimes led to misunderstanding - in other words, some of the new automated system developed failed to meet the needs of the department, or failed to meet them on time. To prevent this problem, the developer must develop a user friendly automated system. Although, most employers expect their potential employees to be prepared to use computers as tools whatever field or business. In response, automation system will be very helpful to firms. They felt they needed some additional skills to keep their jobs to be considered for advancement, or change to a more desirable job. Third, adopting new changes requires changing work culture. Most industries are being transformed by the use of computers. When automation of system is being implemented in a company, changes will occur. There's a change in their working routines where they will be using computers to speed up their work from manual to computerization. But some people are not ready to accept new ideas. They are afraid that their skills might be regarded as inadequate. Though many people have been afraid to the new system, but great strides have been made in transforming the system into a friendlier, less mysterious tool. One of the advantages is that, with the proper software and proper orientation to the end - users, it will perform calculations quickly and accurately, with much greater precision and speed than would be possible manually. Thus, math anxiety will not prevent from providing the employer with, for example, complicated statistical or financial report. According to A StickyMinds.com Original "You are going to need to double up on your staff. You'll still need to maintain your manual testing staff while the automation is developed. And you'll need a separate automation staff to get that effort off the ground without derailing your existing testing activities." This would help to make testing activity successful. In response to this, all employees and the management will be benefited, they'll no longer wait for long tie to process volume of papers to finish. It would be nice to talk each of them that using automation the process in working will become easier for them. Through automation the process in the company will be more effective & time consuming. Fourth, Qualified personnel for Technical support and maintenance. Some companies look for the stability of the firm. It should have a good maintenance and support. Should have technical support staff for maintenance and repair. A staff for training new users. Why are maintenance costs so high One major reason is organizational change. The firm may experience large internal changes in structure or leadership, or change may come from its surrounding environment. These changes affect the system requirements. An equally common cause of long-term maintenance problems is faulty systems analysis and design, especially information requirement. If errors are detected early, during analysis and design, the cost to the systems development effort is small. But if they are not discovered until after programming, testing, or conversion has been completed, the costs is too expensive. A minor logic error might only take an hour. To be able to handle maintenance quickly and inexpensively, an automation system must be flexible. A flexible system can more quickly and easily be repaired when problems occur. Such a system can more quickly and easily be repaired when problems occur. Such a system can also be modified as business requirements change over the years. For example, a sales system must be able to accommodate new products, new sales staff and even new offices with few or no problems. Inflexibility, a common problem, partially because many designers do not consider the need for change as they design new systems. Fifth, Loss of jobs and computers will replace people. Because of the problems with change, testing on automation efforts try to minimize the workload but then lessen the staffs. According to the book of (Mazzucchelli,1985) "Traditionally, in the United States, many low-level jobs are held by young people and immigrants with language problems. Therefore, what at first seems like an advantage of computerization may really be a disadvantage. McDonald's restaurants came to this conclusion not too long ago when the decided not to eliminate the order-casher positions at the front counters staffed by people and replace them with automation systems that customers would use to key in their own orders." Automation conserve time, mans-effort in doing an activity. It's no wonder that so many businesses have adopted computers so readily. Quick and easy production of accurate. The US government was one of the first institutions to benefit from increased data processing speed. Census taking was one of the most arduous processing tasks ever undertaken in this country. Almost 50,000 people collected data by hand, completing forms of approximately 13 million households. Census employees increased from time to time to fast processing of tabulation. Processing this by hand usually took more than eight years, no sooner would the population be tallied than the new census would begin. As a result most efficient new method is to go through automation for efficient recording and tabulating the census. With the use of automation system through data entry and on punched cards. Although at the time the speed of this data processing method was a major break through - it only took six weeks to compute an unofficial census. Therefore, automation lessens time and effort. Sixth, Company has tried automation before, and it did not work. Automation if studied well will make business firms stable, concrete and feasible to any business activities. But then some companies failed to use automated systems due to hard to understand and learn, hard to relate, confusing forms and sometimes unable to meet the companies needs. A food company named BigMak used Solomon System before this costs up to 2 Million Pesos, but later on they stopped using it due to poor technical support from vendor, confusing and lack of staff to operate it.(Lucas,1981) To take an action to this situation the company must determine which vendor to choose. A financial stability of the vendor should be strong, should be in business when calling for their assistance. The system will not fail or become unusable if and only it was generate correctly, completely and effectively. Through complete and proper testing of the system it would be easy to detect this problem prior before the implementation. Seventh, Not Open minded to the ability of the New system. Many office personnel assert that automation and the level of thinking of computers is strictly mechanical and lacks a real capacity for judgment and that too man computer enthusiasts are confusing data with ideas. For instance, automation is being used to produce inhumane projects thought up only because a computer made them possible, and it must develop standard checking systems to ensure the integrity of data used to make strategic decisions in government as well in business. In addition to the problems of computer-controlled nuclear weapons, the potential to abuse of power concerns many people. On the other hand, this possibility could lead to the opposite situation, the existence of huge banks of data and information. And contains essentially all data related to everyone's public and private life can be frightening to consider. Eight, more security problems to deal with. Companies resist automation due to security problems. Sometimes, the system can easily view personal as well as confidential data. And hacked by unauthorized person / user. Software piracy, hacking or theft, which has become a major concern of software writers and manufacturers. Data's that are confidential or critical to a firms operation becomes available and easy to access. Well designed system like putting security measures will restrict the entry of unauthorized persons, generally to circumvent theft or vandalism. Large firms having sufficient cash resources and expensive mainframe computers may find that a large number of these security measures are needed to adequately protect their resources. A medium sized-firm such as Infoage would find many of these measures too costly to implement. To prevent from unauthorized users, a simple thing is that authorizations should be verified by sound identification techniques. When requesting access to data and information via-on-line terminals, users should be required to enter passwords. Another authentication system increasingly being utilized in data communication network. Automations security can verify that the requesting person is an authorized user. Another feature can be seen or implement in a system like automatic lockout. This keep unauthorized person s from accessing an on-line automated system. To prevent persons from guessing passwords, an automatic lockup feature causes the security module to lock terminal after three attempts to enter the proper password. The security module might also automatically log a user off the screen alter a short period during which terminal stands idle. If this procedure is established, an authorized person cannot use a terminal when an authorized user leaves for any reason. In response to this problem, the company should be aware of the security measures not only in all visible assets but also all confidential datas including personal and private data. The system that shall be implemented should have security such as using passwords in any transaction made. Ninth, Design of the System. The actual design of the system fails to capture essential business requirements. According to (Lucas, 1974), "Information may not be provided by the system quickly enough or in usable". Because some automation system go unused because they were designed with a poor user interface ( this is the part of the system that end users interact with ). For example an input form or on-line data entry screen may be so poorly arranged that no one wants to submit data. Or the procedures to request on-line information retrieval may be unintelligible. For instance, managers in a prominent commercial bank with branches throughout the United States and Europe find its batch loan account system printed reports contain pages filled with zeros, making it practically impossible to assess the status of a clients loan. The amount of the loan, the outstanding balance, and the repayment schedule must be tracked manually. In response to this, there must be a very close communication of the vendor through the company in able to give all the necessary information from entry through its output. It is necessary to know which is to prioritize for every transaction so that the vendor is able to know the right entries and outcomes from the system design made. Tenth, Inability to meet user Needs. Developing software that actually meets user needs can be difficult in a process where the end user commits to the product before that product has been built. Defining user needs and judging the quality of the completed system have proven to be major challenges. Most systems development projects begin by defining user information requirements and specifications in the form of systems analysis and design documents. One problem is that meeting specifications does not necessarily guarantee quality. The completed system may in fact meet the specifications but not satisfy the user's needs. There's an impact to the users as data cannot give an accurate, incomplete, or improperly detailed specifications; functions omitted from the specifications or changing user needs during the development period. Often quality is not quantified in the specifications so that judgments about system quality become subjective. This type of situation can easily deteriorate into finger pointing automation system to users community. Specifications, often fail to consider on functionality, they frequently overlook ease of learning and use, unquestioned accuracy and reliability. Or speed of response. All of these factors are important to the user of the system and so to the success of automation. In response to this, the management should give information properly for them to be able to get good outcomes. Reasons to Resist Change To Automation Systems Scale 1. The initial cost 5 2. Unfamiliar to the new system 4 3. Adopting new changes requires changing work culture 4 4. Qualified personnel for Technical support and maintenance 3 5. Loss of jobs and computers will replace people. 5 6. Company has tried automation before, and it did not work. 3 7. Not Open minded to the ability of the New system 4 8. More security problems to deal with. 3 9. , Design of the System. 2 10. Inability to meet user Needs. 5 4 - 5 Severity 2 - 3 Frequency 1 Very Rare Some business firms resist automation system because mostly their reason is the cost, the computer is unable to meet the companies needs, loosing of jobs are in the top ( 5 ) reason. Followed by unfamiliar to the system, new changes in working culture, not open minded in the ability of the computer. And the rest are reasons that can be easily solve if system is designed and with proper testing and additional of staff. Works Cited Lucas, Henry C., Jr. Implementation: The Key to Successful Information Systems. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981. Lucas, Henry C., Why Information Systems Fail. New York: Columbia University Press, 1974. Mazzuchelli, Louis, "Structured Analysis Can Streamline Software Design." Computerworld, 1985. Ed Guy and Carol Klingler, Lockheed Martin Tactical Defense Systems Read More