Eect051 Management Of Information Systems Assessment Answers

There are various technologies used in business environments today for collaboration purposes. These technologies have changed the way organisations communicate and collaborate with their stakeholders.

Volkswagen Company is the part of automobile industry deals in manufacturing and selling of vehicles. It is one of a well-known brand in the automobile industry. There are various brands in which Volkswagen Company deals or manufacture are Lamborghini, Ducati, Audi, SEAT, Bugati, Volkswagen Passengers cars, Porsche, SKODA, MAN, Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, Scania and Bently (Volkswagen, 2017). Along with this Volkswagen also provide various banking, insurance, and leasing services etc. The current priority of Volkswagen Company is on their ‘TOGETHER- Strategy 2025", because according to the management of company this strategy will help Volkswagen to become the leader car makers all around the world. This strategy will change the look of Volkswagen vehicles till 2025 as all the cars will be fully electric with battery expanding technology and self-controlled driving features.

Strategy of Volkswagen

In the whole world, Volkswagen name is very famous. This company provides twelve brands like Lamborghini, Ducati, Audi, SEAT, Bugati, Volkswagen Passengers cars, Porsche, SKODA, MAN, Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, Scania, and Bently. The company's strategy is to spread their brand in all around the world because they want to increase their market share. The aim of the company is to become the economic and environmental leader and in order to achieve this position their set goals are:

• The Volkswagen’s main agenda is to increase their revenue and sales yearly with the increase in their growth percentage in the market.
• The company wants to provide good quality of vehicles which will result in increasing the satisfaction of their customers with the help of adopting new innovative ideas and technologies because it will help the company to become the leader in the automobile industry.  
• In the automobile industry, Volkswagen wants to achieve a position to be called as the best employer. For this, it is necessary to have a fit and best team and people who are self-motivated to give their best and manufacture best vehicles.

Volkswagen Company faces huge competition in the market but they are moving forward by giving strong competition to its competitors. The company is manufacturing and launching new and innovative vehicles with advanced technologies every year. The automobile industry is enhancing their performance in North America and attaining high growth in the market of China. The competitors of Volkswagen Company are General Motors, Toyota, and Ford Motors Company. All these companies have their good image and position in the global market. The key success factors of the company are customer satisfaction, research, and development department and innovations due to which company is able to sustain in the market (Pratt, 2017).

Manufacturing interface of Volkswagen

Manufacturing methods and plants of vehicles are made by the Volkswagen Company of high standards in order to meet the demands of the market (Volkswagen fleet sales, 2017). The life cycle valuation team of Volkswagen Company evaluate the vehicles manufacturing process at the manufacturing plants but with that, they also evaluate the other process takes place outside the manufacturing plant. The initial process for manufacturing the vehicles is the production of raw material such as sand, oil and iron ore so that these raw material can be used to manufacture the engine of aluminum, body, plastic, and rubber for tyres and windows.

With the help of trucks and trains suppliers of Volkswagen Company supply the useful raw material to the manufacturing plants. Further, the evaluation has been done at the growth stage and define the environmental and manufacturing procedure influence on the life cycle. It is done so that improvement can be done in the further stages and levels. The company is working in the direction of reducing the emission and consumption of fuel by reducing the weight of the vehicle. All these factors are affected by the manufacturing process, vehicles design and selection of the material. The environmental profile of the vehicle is affected by the lightweight design (Volkswagen, 2017).

Use of Collaboration technology

Collaboration technology is used by business for making their workforce perform smartly and faster because it helps in increasing the productivity of the company. Technologies are needed which can be easily used and makes the user familiar with the process of implementing the technology (Odom, 2017). These technologies help people to convert their knowledge into action. The platform of collaboration should be provided to the employees in every business so that employees can talk about their work-related problems and can share their opinions. This platform also helps in finding new ways for performing work by the company for their employees. The market is full of collaboration technologies created for the use of business and other people so that they can talk with people staying away from them. There are numerous company who develop these kind of technologies in order to reduce the burden of work and eliminate the use of paper. These technologies help business in growing their revenue because the process becomes faster. Tools provided by vendors include a social platform like Facebook, Yammer, Chatter, etc. The key agenda for creating these technologies is that they help in the business which is expanded in various countries (Cawog, 2017).

Collaboration technology

Volkswagen uses various collaboration technology for interacting with its employees, customers, manufacturer, and suppliers, etc. The company uses this technology because it provides more value to the business. The technologies that Volkswagen use in its day to day activities are:

Conference Call

The conference call is the interaction between more than two people on a phone call. Business makes use of conference call for conducting urgent meetings or conversation on a call with its employees staying at a different location in order to complete the part of work which is not able to complete without the guidance of those employees (Web Finance, 2017). By using the option of the conference call on the mobile phone people can interact with people staying at a different place at any time. This technology is advanced and helpful for business as it enables the interaction with the employees or workers in remote areas, with different business units or with suppliers in different cities or countries. Conference calling is a cost-effective technology as it reduces the expenses of a business that are indulged on traveling in order to attend important meetings. Along with inexpensive feature this technology is also flexible as while attending a meeting on calls there is no need to sit at one place person can move from its place. Further, conference call technology is very helpful for conducting last-minute meetings, where people are available at different locations (Powwow Now, 2017).

Importance of Conference call

Informing about important decisions- Conference call help Volkswagen Company to share important information with the employees and about important changes in the system of business. Manager, client, and salesperson of Volkswagen Company interact with each other for discussing some important aspects of the job (Joseph, 2017).

Advantage- The money and time of Volkswagen Company are not wasted due to conference call because people talk with each other by dialing a number on their cell phone. The company uses this technology for communicating with its stakeholders and it also helps in completing the task on time.           

File Share

While operating the job online there are many files which are important to share with the managers and colleagues of the business. File share technology facilitates the option of sharing a file of large size as attachments. Although files can also be shared through Email but the big size file cannot be sent and for sharing big size file we have to fill our inbox. Therefore, a file share is used by Volkswagen Company so that they can send big size files to its employees, customers, suppliers, etc. It also provides the facility for tracking the transfer's storage place (Smith, 2014). Files in file share can be easily uploaded and it is cost-effective.

Motivate- The file share technology is very helpful because of the confidence of employees for innovation increases. The employees of Volkswagen Company can share their ideas and concepts that are generated in the last few millennia. The employees of the company get motivated and provide their precious ideas to the company.

Positive results- One of the main importance of file share is that it makes the work of the company easy and provide positive results because people can share their thoughts and ideas in the form of a file (IPRO, 2016). Volkswagen Company uses file share technology because they get good results from it in the form of business efficiency and the speed of decision-making increases.   

Wiki is a website offer content’s collaborative editing in it and in its structure by the user. The meaning of wiki is fast and this work came from a work of Hawaiian i.e. “wiki wiki”. Wiki supports hyperlinks and it to make new pages it requires the composition of the simple text. Wikipedia is an example of a large wiki, it is also known as an encyclopedia that offers information in various languages that can be edited by anyone. The importance of wiki to Volkswagen Company is that it offers collaborative editing by the user (LeBar, 2017).

Email is used by many businesses for communicating with the customers, suppliers, employees, and from all the stakeholders. It also helps in reducing the communication gap between employees and managers. Email is used to transfer the messages typed on mobile devices and computers with the help of telecommunication. Email not only offer the facility of sending messages but it also provides the facility of sending non-text files which are known as attachments. These attachments can be a graphic image and sound files and are transferred in the form of binary streams. The messages that are transferred through email they are normally encoded in ASCII TEXT (Rouse, 2013). Email is a very famous collaboration technology which people are using from a long time and still, they prefer using it due to its feature of confidentiality and secrecy and this is the reason behind the most of the traffic on the internet. Email is exchanged between many people and with this, a single mail can be sent to multiple people without disclosing the information of all the people who receive that single mail (Digital Unite, 2017).

Importance of Email 

Universality- Email is used by most of the business for the purpose of communication because it can be reached any location at a minimum time. Other social networking sites are famous but they are not so safe as compared to Email (Storm, 2017). The data that is delivered through Email remain confidential and it can be kept as a proof it needed. With the help of email address, the identity can be identified of the sender in case of a theft or fraud. Further, Email is used worldwide for making online payments, online shopping and in banks, etc. (Silva, 2017).   

Recommendation

Volkswagen Company is a well-known brand worldwide. They are known for their various and innovative designs and feature in vehicles, therefore, they should increase the use of Collaboration technology and should provide training to its employees so that they can use those technologies effectively. The training program will increase the confidence of employees because it will help them in increasing the knowledge and skills of employees and through this, they will give their best in their part of responsibilities.

Conclusion

In the conclusion, it can be said that collaboration technologies are very helpful for all the people who use the internet or different gadgets in order to interact with their friends, colleagues, relatives, and family members who live at different places or locations. Volkswagen Company is a known brand in automobile industry which make use of different technologies to manufacture their vehicle. But with these technologies, they also use collaboration technologies which help them in achieving their long-term and short-term objectives. Collaboration technologies that are used by Volkswagen Company to interact with its stakeholders have explained above in the report such as conference call, file share, wiki, and email. Besides this, there are many more technologies which are used by the company to increase the communication with the customers, employees, and suppliers. All these technologies have a universality feature as they can be reached at any location at a single go. Therefore, all business should use these kind of technologies so that their business can be enhanced and can attain their goals. 

References

Cawog, J., 2017, How Collaboration Technologies Are Improving Process, Workflow and Business Performance, Accessed on: 17 December 2017, Accessed from: https://www.prysm.com/blog/how-collaboration-technologies-are-improving-process-workflow-and-business-performance

Digital Unite, 2017, What is email? Accessed on: 17 December 2017, Accessed from: https://www.digitalunite.com/guides/email/what-is-email

IPRO, 2016, The importance of file sharing and collaboration in your business, Accessed on: 17 December 2017, Accessed from: https://www.ipromedia.us/importance-file-sharing-and-collaboration-business/

Joseph, C., 2017, The Importance of Business Conference Calls, Accessed on: 17 December 2017, Accessed from: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/importance-business-conference-calls-718.html

LeBar, Z., 2017, What Are Wikis, and Why Should You Use Them? Accessed on: 17 December 2017, Accessed from: https://business.tutsplus.com/tutorials/what-are-wikis-and-why-should-you-use-them--cms-19540

Odom, C., 2017, Use Technology to Foster Collaboration in Your Office, Accessed on: 17 December 2027, Accessed from: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/249601

Powwow Now, 2017, What is conference calling? Accessed on: 17 December 2017, Accessed from: https://www.powwownow.co.uk/conference-call/what-is-conference-calling

Pratt, B. 2017. Case Analysis: Volkswagen Group. Accessed on: 17 December 2017. Accessed from: https://people.ucsc.edu/~brpratt/Courses/ECON136Su15/VWAG_Example.pdf

Rouse, M., 2013, E-mail (electronic mail or email), Accessed on: 17 December 2017, Accessed from: https://searchexchange.techtarget.com/definition/e-mail-electronic-mail-or-email

Silva, B.D., 2017, Why Is Email Important in Business Communication? Accessed on: 17 December 2017, Accessed from: https://bizfluent.com/info-7816540-email-important-business-communication.html

Smith, G., 2014, 22 File-Sharing Tools for Easy Collaboration, Accessed on: 17 December 2017, Accessed from: https://mashable.com/2014/03/06/file-sharing-tools/#i2x4RM6iGPqz

Storm, L., 2017, Why Is Email Important in Business Communication? Accessed on: 17 December 2017, Accessed from: https://itstillworks.com/email-important-business-communication-1643.html

Volkswagen fleet sales. 2017. Manufacturing. Accessed on: 17 December 2017. Accessed from: https://vwcorporatefleet.com/vw/common/why-vw/manufacturing

Volkswagen. 2017. About us. Accessed on: 17 December 2017. Accessed from: https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/group.html

Volkswagen. 2017. Manufacturing. Accessed on: 17 December 2017. Accessed from: https://en.volkswagen.com/en/company/responsibility/environmental_commendations/environmental_commendation/life_cycle/Manufacturing.html

Web Finance, 2017, Conference call, Accessed on: 17 December 2017, Accessed from: https://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/conference-call.html.