Frank Andera

An Analysis of the Usage of Electronic Dictation By Business Executives

Today’s business environment is in a constant state of technological change. Many businesses have incorporated word processing, electronic mail, and other technological advances attempting to improve written communication and the productivity of managers and secretaries. Flatley concluded that managers expect a marked increase in the use of modern technology to create their written communication (Flatley, 1982). The continuous advances in this support technology require new skills and knowledge for both executives and secretaries. A skill the executive has always relied upon for effective communication is the ability to compose and dictate effective documents. But, research conducted by Mayer shows that few word origination studies have addressed the importance of dictation skills and the formal training related to these skills (Mayer, 1980). Satterwhite’s research examined how today’s technology affects basic communication skills. The research discussed what communication skills (including dictation skills) were needed by today’s graduates (Satterwhite, 1986). Halpern pointed out that college writing teachers can prepare students to address dictation problems by helping them adapt the familiar process of writing to the unfamiliar requirements of speaking writing (Halpern, 1980). In today’s management of information systems, word processing has brought about a change in the way communication is completed. An effective and efficient word processing support system necessitates the use of machine dictation. The executive’s ability to dictate effective documents from an outline rather than writing out the entire document is an important cost-saving

VOICE INPUT TO COMPUTERS: How Will It Affect the Teaching of Business Communication?:

Envision your business communication students drafting their assignments by simply dictating to a microphone attached to their computers. Dictating such items as memorandums, letters, and even reports. If a mistake is made, they simply state &dquo;backspace&dquo; and like the backspace key on their outdated keyboard the mistake is erased. Or, maybe they want to invoke the spellchecker. By simply dictating &dquo;spell-check,&dquo; the system begins evaluating the manuscript for possible spelling errors. Science fiction, you might say. Not at all, for today exists a technology that allows for voice input to the computer systems that will accept speech input as a substitute for the keyboard. &dquo;Once the stuff of Buck Rogers fiction, computers that take dictation are here&dquo; (Lewyn, 1985,5B). In industry these systems are currently being used successfully in many tasks such as product grading, in-line inspection, machine control, inventory data entry, and robotics. Major advantages include freeing up the operator’s hands and eyes for other tasks and allowing greater freedom of movement Many of these systems don’t require extensive vocabularies; sometimes less than 100 words (Kuzela 1986, p. 36). Major productivity gains have been documented. James Pierce, a senior systems analyst at Burlington Industries Inc., reported that 45 voice input to computer systems used at Burlington have achieved productivity gains in excess of 25 percent. At General Motors, voice input is used to record auto defects and ensure that they are corrected on the production line; it has helped reduce the number of cars returned to dealers for warranty repairs by 50 percent (Kuzela 1986). In the engineering field, engineers can create a complete design on a PC workstation without touching a keyboard, tablet, or joy stick. By simply dictating into a microphone attached to a computer, the engineer can zoom in on a small detail, add dimensions and annotations, change the drawing, and zoom out to check the work (Voice Activated CAD System 1986, p. 66). But what about the business environment where voice input systems must be prepared to accept large vocabularies? Today a number of organizations are working on systems to accomplish just that Speech Systems, Inc. has developed a voice response system which uses a phone-like input unit that transfers speech to a voice

Managing IT Change—Sales, Marketing, and Distribution

In the past, all of the budgeting and reporting required to manage information technology (IT) change for sales, marketing, and distribution was extremely tedious and often could not provide the needed level of accuracy to make the evaluation process work properly. It was considered too complex to accurately budget for and evaluate the success of each promotion. Today, with the cross-functional breadth of enterprise resource planning applications, this is simply no longer the case. It is also the case that many promotions will be essentially identical across the company or across different geographies. This allows for the reuse of much of the work required to design the collection, evaluation, and reporting process. It does, however, require significant work for management accountants to work with each of the other functions within the business to work through detailed algorithms such that changes in production and/or sales volumes can be analyzed and all of the true costs associated with each of these promotions can be identified. These are all opportunities for more analytical approaches to management afforded by the conversion to integrated business system design and the implementation of enterprise resource planning applications.